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Irish Seed Savers who celebrate their 21st birthday this year have announced their Open Day on Sunday 12 August running from 11am to 5pm. “We have a really wonderful line up of speakers on the day,” says Geraldine Tobin, Marketing Coordinator with Irish Seed Savers.
The first is Joy Larkcom (Author of ’Life as a Garden Writer’) who will be speaking at 2pm. Joy Larkcom has been to the forefront of heritage vegetable growing since the late 1970s when with her husband and two young children she rented out the family’s Suffolk farmhouse, packed a year’s necessities into a caravan and took off for continental Europe. On the hunt for rare vegetable varieties and unusual methods of cultivation, she visited countless horticultural research stations, vegetable plots, institutes, allotments, botanic gardens, plant breeders, seed companies and village markets, as well as the kitchen gardens of castles and grand châteaux. By the end of the trip Joy had collected seed of more than 150 different salad and vegetable varieties. Since then she has travelled extensively to China, Japan and Taiwan and then to the US and Canada. All the while she was also writing for magazines and journals as well as horticultural books. Joy and her husband Don Pollard settled in West Cork in 2004 where they have created a wonderful kitchen garden.
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Klaus Laitenberger has written two books for Irish Vegetable gardeners, the most recent of which is Vegetables for the Polytunnel and Greenhouse. Klaus also gives workshops on Growing Organic Vegetables in the Polytunnel. We also are delighted that Trevor Sargent will be giving a talk also on his new book Trevor’s Kitchen Garden. Trevor has been another long time supporter of Irish Seed Savers and we are delighted he will be joining us on the day. Joy, Klaus and Trevor will all be signing copies of their most recent books on the day.
This year Irish Seed Savers are delighted to be able to offer garden tours and orchard tours at the best time to see everything flourishing.
“This year we are taking a break from our usual Apple Weekend so that we can show off the seed gardens when they are at their peak and highlight the heritage Irish vegetables we grow for seed,” says Geraldine Tobin Marketing Coordinator. We will also be doing our Apple Tasting straight off the trees, tasting whatever varieties are ripe on the day.
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You can take a tour of our new seed bank or take a guided walk around the orchards and gardens. Keeping with the apple theme, there will be tastings of pomme de terre (French for potatoes) and pomo d’oro (Italian for tomatoes). There will also be some cookery demonstrations and traditional skills demonstrations throughout the day. Timoni Kawashima will give a Japanese cookery demonstration using Irish Seed Savers produce, sushi with a twist!
Children will be well taken care of with great activities like making Wooden Whistles and Fuzzy Bees, face painting and going on Bug Hunts.
Throughout the day we will also have lots of stalls, an organic Café and homemade cob oven pizzas.
There will be live music and singers on the day and we are hoping the sunshine will join us too! So do come along and join us in celebrating Irish Seed Savers coming of age celebration.
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For Irish Seed Savers supporters there is no charge and for everyone else the charge is €5 per adult and children are free.
As usual there is no parking on site so visitors are advised to park at Scariff National School and take one of the 5 shuttle busses running from 11am for the short hop to Irish Seed Savers.
Irish Seed Savers Association
Capparoe
Scarriff
Co. Clare
Web: www.irishseedsavers.ieEmail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Telephone: +353 61 921866
