Pictured: Keith Kelleher, Darcy Callaghan, Isabelle Kelleher and Ava Leigh Kelleher.
Donnybrook played its part in this year’s Halloween festivities with a fun-filled event in The Heritage Garden on Bloomfield Avenue. The centre’s Celebration of Halloween took place on November 1st on a somewhat stormy evening packed with fancy dress, games, pizza and storytelling.
The driving force behind the Allhallowtide event was the desire to thank the numerous families who perform volunteer work with Heritage, and to reign in everybody’s favourite pagan holiday together. Project co-ordinator Jacqueline Kelleher spoke to NewsFour at the event.
“We sent out posters and used our own website,” she said. “We don’t have funding and we fund the project ourselves. At the last event (in September) we had over a hundred people, but this is our first Halloween event.”
Mary May, who is another volunteer, as well as being the chief of the garden, was the person responsible for conceiving of the idea for the celebration itself. All food at the event was made from the fresh produce of the garden, and sorted out from scratch.
Pictured: Mary May makes pizza using some of the vegetables from the garden.
The evening also gave the volunteers the opportunity to debut their brand new pizza oven. The oven was built by volunteers after a two-day course from home improvement outfit Mud & Wood, designed from plain straw with a foundation of bricks at the bottom.
“The Gardens are just amazing, and all the people who work here,” Mary May said. “We used apples from the Orchard, made apple jelly, but it’s all gone!”
Also present on the day was Hubert Martin, a representative from WALK, an organisation based on the Long Mile Road that deals with people who have intellectual disabilities. Many of the props featured in the Heritage Garden were donated directly from a WALK event in Drimnagh Castle the previous week.
“As part of WALK, I go around to Dublin community garden growers,” said Martin. “I go around to a lot of the gardens and help out whichever way we can, and subsequently they help us out. Everything’s community based.”
By Craig Kinsella
