Growing Change: By Hans Zomer, GAP Ireland

How a West Dublin community is growing plants, and harvesting hope

Something remarkable has been quietly growing in Corduff in West Dublin: a community garden that is sparking connection, confidence and climate action.

The community garden, managed by Global Action Plan (GAP) Ireland, is a striking example of how, when people come together to grow food and care for nature, the result is much more than vegetables and plants. What they are growing is a community, and a blueprint for a fairer, greener and more inclusive future.

What began three years ago as a bare patch of soil in the University’s Blanchardstown campus is now the GLAS @ TU Dublin community garden, alive with vegetables, ideas and community spirit, and a hub of activities where social inclusion and sustainability can take root together.

Born out of a partnership between GAP Ireland, TU Dublin and Fingal County Council, the half-acre garden was officially opened in May 2023. Since then, it has become a much loved green space for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities to gather to learn, laugh and grow together. As Mayor of Fingal Howard Mahony put it on the community garden’s opening day, its true beauty lies not only in the plants and vegetables, but in the way it brings people together.

Growing plants, and harvesting confidence

At its heart, the GLAS programme combines two things that are rarely brought together: environmental education and social inclusion.

For too long, climate action and community wellbeing have been seen as separate challenges. GLAS reimagines them as deeply connected. Its starting point is that people need to develop confidence, before they can take action to change their lives, or their communities.

People need confidence, as they know that challenges like biodiversity loss and climate change are huge and complex. In the face of such global problems, many people prefer to turn away, and wish for the problem to just disappear.

The GLAS community garden offers an antidote to that paralysis. The garden aims to create a place where people can connect, take part in meaningful, achievable actions, and see their efforts bear fruit - literally and metaphorically.

In learning to grow vegetables, make compost or harvest rainwater, participants discover that small, local actions are significant in themselves, but also can add up to something bigger: local actions, when undertaken with others, can be the seeds of a transformation of society.

These experiences build confidence and solidarity, spark inspiration, and demonstrate how simple, shared steps can ripple outward to create social tipping points. In this way, the garden shows that change is within reach, and that every hand in the soil contributes to a larger movement for a fairer, greener future.

Radical inclusivity

What makes GLAS truly unique is its radical inclusivity. The programme actively welcomes people often excluded from sustainability conversations: asylum seekers, people with disabilities, the long-term unemployed and those experiencing isolation. In doing so, it dismantles the belief that “my actions don’t matter” and replaces it with lived proof that small, shared actions can build community resilience and hope.

As Nelson Mandela once said, “It is in your hands to create a better world for all who live in it.” The GLAS gardens embody this ethos every day. Each raised bed, each compost bay and each seed planted is a reminder that everyone has a role to play in shaping a more sustainable and inclusive society.

Workshops are central to this mission. From composting and soil health to biodiversity and waste reduction, the gardens host practical sessions that transform abstract ideas into hands-on experiences. Local schools bring children to learn in a living classroom, while community groups such as the Central Remedial Clinic, St Michael’s House and local autism services use the space to let their service users connect, learn and grow.

Many benefits of community gardens

The impact has been powerful. Since its opening, GLAS @ TU Dublin has welcomed hundreds of visitors, echoing the success of its sister garden in Ballymun, which has been described as both “an urban oasis” and “a vehicle for change.” In 2024 alone, the GLAS @ TU Dublin community garden hosted over 1900 visitors across more than 100 events.

Researchers at TU Dublin have called for “more widespread use of community gardens across urban areas,” noting their importance not only for food and biodiversity, but for mental health and social inclusion. Their assessment of the impact of the GLAS garden in Ballymun concluded people and organisations visit the garden for very different reasons, but that all of them benefit from access to this urban green space.

“Our findings are in line with a wealth of academic literature that shows how community gardens are not only important for the biodiversity they promote and for the food that they cultivate, but that access to such urban oases is hugely important to people for reasons to do with social inclusion, environmental awareness and mental health,” said Rachel Freeman, lecturer in Horticulture at TU Dublin.

Buoyed by these findings, and their everyday experience, GAP is now aiming to scale the programme even further. In 2025, GAP hopes to launch a community gardens GLAS Monaghan project, with support from Monaghan County Council and the EU’s PEACEPLUS programme, bringing their award-winning model to a new region. It will replicate the success of the GLAS community gardens in Ballymun and Corduff, in an effort to use existing and budding community gardens in the county to build greater social cohesion in towns and villages in Monaghan.

At a time that the challenges of the modern world can feel overwhelming, the GLAS gardens are proof that the solutions are often beautifully simple. They show us that when people come together - with soil on their hands and a shared purpose in their hearts - they can transform not just a garden, but a whole community.

For more information about the GLAS @ TU Dublin community garden, visit www.globalactionplan.ie