Being Energy Aware Matters

Being Energy Aware Matters

Shirley Lanigan explores why being energy aware matters – the code by which The Barrow Experience project operates.
It is a code by which we could all stand. This is a garden that is admirable in so many ways: Built for and worked by people with special intellectual needs, it is exactly the sort of positive creation we should be seeing everywhere. Shirley will lead a walk and talk, through the ten small, organically worked, interlinked gardens, nestled into the one-acre site on the banks of the River Barrow. Horticulture and history, local lore, tradition and organic methodology all weave together in this admirable project. Shirley will speak about generous gardening, planting for the senses, better use of gardens, gardening responsibly and remembering that we owe the world.

Shirley Lanigan has been writing about Irish gardens for two decades in books and magazines, continuously criss-crossing the island, visiting and re-visiting every large and small, old and new, public and private garden she can find. She lives and loves Irish gardens. Travelling like this puts her in the enviable position of constantly meeting with, and learning from, hundreds of enthusiastic amateur gardeners and growers, as well as with professionals and experts of long standing and international renown.

After twenty years of enjoyable nosing about, she has become more and more interested in how our gardens are evolving in the face of a fast changing and worrying world. Shirley is a regular columnist with the Irish Garden magazine and has published a number of books on Irish gardens: The O’Brien Guide to Irish Gardens (2001), The 100 Best Gardens in Ireland (2011) and The Open Gardens of Ireland (2017). With a background in art, she has a keen interest in the use of art in gardens and believes that gardens made by artists are particularly fascinating. The artist’s eye adds an extra, magical and often indefinable dimension to a garden, making them the most rewarding places to visit and explore.