BEST GREEN BUSINESS: Green ethos at Carraig Gardens

When the Celt contacts Una Hole she is painting a bench. The bench is one of dozens dotted around her fabulous Carraig Gardens and tearoom from which visitors and customers can appreciate the amazing plants.

All of the furniture in her Mountnugent business is made from damaged chairs, wooden palates or anything else she can get her hands on. “The kids’ furniture is made out of flowerpots and frisbies,” she explains of the fun children’s area, which also has a house built from old tree stakes and toadstools conjured up from light fittings.

Frustrated by waste in both the construction and gardening sectors, Una insists on doing what she can to put discarded items to use. The cafe was constructed from materials that would have been heading for the skip had they not been salvaged. The effect looks far from DIY.

Una had intended that all of the jams and preserves (except for marmalade) used and sold in the cafe would be made from fruit grown in her gardens and her farm fields in Hilltown.

Because “it took off much better than expected,” she had to source more fruit locally.

Una has a hazel coppice of around half an acre, which she uses, along with shrub and tree prunings, to run the tearoom’s stove.

She bakes the treats sold in the cafe on site, and any excess doesn’t go to waste.

“We work a lunch box scheme with neighbouring houses - they can come in on a Sunday evening and for a reduced price get items for lunchboxes.”

Carraig Gardens is designed and maintained by Una, a qualified and vastly experienced horticulturalist.

She harvests rainwater into barrels to water plants in polytunnel, glasshouses and potted plants the various parts of her three-acre grounds. Una composts all green, brown and white (napkins, paper, baking parchment) materials and also shreds green materials to use as a mulsch.

She also saves seeds - flowers, plants, veg - for the following year’s crops and invests so much of herself in the garden.

“Time and patience has to go into it - wanting an instant garden is creating a huge amount of waste.”

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