As climate change intensifies, urban areas like Cabra in Dublin 7 are increasingly vulnerable to environmental challenges such as heat stress, urban flooding and biodiversity loss.
Enter Connecting Cabra. Founded in early 2021, Connecting Cabra Sustainable Energy Community has stepped up to confront these challenges, aiming to create a low-carbon, sustainable energy community.
A central goal is to engage and empower local residents through community-driven environmental initiatives. Connecting Cabra recognises that climate change issues such as fuel poverty, active transport, accessibility and mobility, biodiversity and green spaces – and let’s not forget the circular economy – are all linked. They can’t be examined in isolation. Thus we engage in many issues beyond energy efficiency and renewable energy.
We [Stephen Shanahan and Michelle Nolan] studied together at the National Botanic Gardens in the early 1990s. In 2022, both now living in Cabra, we met again through our common interests. We are both now members of Connecting Cabra, and are at the forefront of Connecting Cabra’s biodiversity projects.
Professionally, we are an owner of a landscaping and garden design company (Stephen) and a gardener employee in the Parks Department of a local authority (Michelle).
As climate change activists, we bring our expertise and experience in horticulture to Connecting Cabra’s activities. Our involvement has led to a series of horticultural initiatives. Horticulture is critical to the group’s efforts to combat urban heat, increase biodiversity, and improve residents’ quality of life.
The foundation for these efforts was laid by a Biodiversity Action Plan, drawn up during the summer of 2022. This report was commissioned by Connecting Cabra from Wildlife Surveys Ireland Ltd, and was funded by the Community Foundation of Ireland.
The aim of the Biodiversity Action Plan is to roadmap Cabra into a greener, cooler, more resilient community. The report identifies key strategies for enhancing Cabra’s biodiversity while addressing environmental and social issues, such as habitat loss, flood alleviation and heat stress.
For our plan, ecologists Donna Mullen and Brian Keeley – who both grew up in Cabra – recommended a series of actions, ranging from easily achievable to more ambitious.
Local strategies for sustainability
These actions were: provision of a wetland/pond; biodiversity in a box project; food for free trial; cease pesticide and herbicide use; attracting swifts; ‘grey to green’ – creating native hedges for bees, butterflies and moths; increasing biodiversity in Deaf Village and local schools; human health – more trees to reduce heat stress and air pollution; grassland management – creating long and short flowering meadows; connecting people with nature; public engagement; and ask the experts.
Funding from Dublin City Council (DCC) has been secured to develop our ‘Biodiversity in a Box’ project. Each box will contain the ingredients necessary to create a mini nature reserve in Cabra gardens. The boxes will contain wildflower plug plants for pollinators, a small tree, a bird bath, bat and bird boxes, and possibly mini pre-formed ponds.
We hope to get permission from DCC to develop and plant a ‘Food for Free’ trail on council lands, but in the meantime we have given out hundreds of apple trees and other soft fruit trees to households in Cabra as part of our annual Cabra Tree Day, sponsored by Canada Life Reinsurance.
The tree day usually takes place in March, and is highly successful and well supported. We hope that in a few years’ time, when all these apple trees are bearing fruit, the community will come together at a harvest festival to make juice with the new community apple press that we’re in the process of acquiring.
The swift is on the red list of birds of conservation concern in Ireland because its population has declined by over 40 per cent in the last 15 years. Last May, with funding from the Community Foundation of Ireland, we launched our project ‘Bringing them Back Home’. We were able to purchase nest boxes for 18 pairs of swifts, which were installed on the two churches in Cabra.
We have engaged with schools, churches and businesses to turn ‘Grey to Green’, planting over 60 metres of native Irish hedgerow against grey concrete walls, with much more to do.
Underground river & flood alleviation
The land that is now Cabra would have looked very different 100 years ago. The River Bradogue flowed through Cabra before it was culverted and buried underground where it flows today. Old maps show marshlands around the area that is now the local park – John Paul II Park or, as it is known locally, ‘The Bogies’.
According to Rivers of Dublin by Clair Sweeney, an area in this park once known as the Cow Ponds is thought to be the source of the Bradogue. The river in times of heavy rain often makes itself known, and on occasions, with devastating results. Cabra has been badly flooded in the past; floods in 2008 and 2011 were particularly damaging.
To highlight the issue of the ever-present but unseen river beneath our streets, and to start a conversation about the links between urban development and flooding, we came up with the idea of ‘The Bradogue Rediscovery Project’.
Another of the recommendations of the BAP was to help flood alleviation. Funding from the Local Authorities Waters Programme enabled us to instigate an exciting and very necessary project, whereby 76 Cabra houses were offered the chance to have one of five green infrastructure options.
These were concrete driveway conversion; or installations of a native hedge, a rainwater harvester, a tree pit or some water butts. The idea is to showcase alternatives for non-permeable gardens, and to convert them into permeable gardens to help reduce stormwater flow, which is a real issue for Dublin Bay.
The Cabra pond
If there is one action you can take to bring life to a landscape, it is to introduce water in the form of a wetland, pond or mini pond. Greatly enhancing local biodiversity, ponds are thriving ecosystems that support a diverse range of flora and fauna, including various species of aquatic plants, insects, amphibians and birds.
The benefits that a pond can bring to a community are immense, including opportunities for education and awareness of our natural world, not to mention the aesthetic and tranquility values they have in our landscape.
We applied for funding through the Community Foundation Ireland and the AXA Parks grant, and were awarded €7,000 to create a pond and wetland area for the community and wildlife in Cabra.
As a part of the Biodiversity Action Plan for Cabra, it was identified that a pond or wetland should be created within John Paul II Park. Unfortunately, permission for this was not given by Dublin City Council. We hope this can be reviewed in the future.
In the meantime, we set about looking for a site on publicly accessible land for Connecting Cabra’s first wildlife pond. . . .
The biggest issue Connecting Cabra and many other groups face when trying to create a pond is safety and insurance. Obviously, the risk of someone drowning is not something that can be taken lightly, but solutions to this problem are not insurmountable, and we shouldn’t be as quick to say ‘no’.
After many months and many disappointments, Connecting Cabra was given a site on the grounds of the Church of the Most Precious Blood in west Cabra. We are very thankful to the parishes of Cabra West and Christ the King for supporting not only the pond, but fully embracing many of the actions set out in our Biodiversity Action Plan, including long flowering meadows, mini orchards, native hedgerows and the installation of bat and swift boxes.
The parishes’ openness to our plans is in response to understanding the seriousness of biodiversity loss, and to Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, ‘Laudato Si’: on Care for Our Common Home, which encourages every person on the planet to “listen to the cry of the Earth”. There was also a more recent call from the Catholic bishops to set aside 30 per cent of parish lands for nature by 2030.
Pond process
With a site secured, funding in place and volunteers keen to get started, the big question was “what to line the pond with?” Garden ponds big and small, even lakes and reservoirs, are usually made using a liner; EPDM butyl rubber is the best.
An alternative and more traditional way of pond construction, however, involves using clay to line the pond. Clay was used to construct and line the Royal Canal. Much of it had to be brought into areas that did not have clay soils, as in most parts of Dublin.
For the Cabra pond, we decided to use bentonite clay. This is a volcanic material with diverse uses, including in cosmetics, kitty litter, oil drilling, pollution control, and even radioactive material. What could be better to make a natural pond than a natural material such as bentonite clay?
The YouTube tutorials we watched made pond construction look easy. And it was. The excavating and grading were all done in a day. It took another day to get the levels on the pond, and the finer details of various shelves and shallow margins; then the pond was ready to be lined. We ordered a one ton sack of bentonite clay from Clearwater Technology Ltd and set about working it into the top 10-15cm of soil at a rate of 25-35 kg per sq metre – a very dusty job.
Next add water. If you’ve ever made a wet bread dough, this is what it was like. The wet bentonite and soil stuck to everything – boots, tools, hands. It is a very sticky and slippery substance, and was coming away from drier layers below in great clumps. We gave up on trying to work the soil and bentonite together, and decided to continue filling the pond. The water seemed to be holding nicely and was remarkably clear.
We left the hose on overnight. The following day the pond was full to overflowing and looked amazing. Measuring 5 m x 5 m, it made an immediate visual impact within the church grounds. Over the following week, however, it became evident that the pond was not holding water fully, as the level dropped by a third.
The only thing for it was to drain the pond and get stuck in and work the bentonite more thoroughly into the soil. And ‘getting stuck’ was exactly what we were doing, with several small children having to be pulled out minus their wellie boots. It was a messy but fun job, once you got over the ‘ick’ factor and embraced the mud. The pond had a very natural look from the beginning, with no black liner to have to try to conceal.
Once we were happy the pond was fully sealed and holding water, we set about dressing the edges with stone, and creating cobble beach areas in the shallow margins. Lots of native plants were sourced for the margins, including such delights as water-plantain (Alisma plantago-aquatica), flowering-rush (Butomus umbellatus), brooklime (Veronica beccabunga) and branched bur-reed (Sparganium erectum).
The planting has brought lots of invertebrate life, with swarms of tiny water fleas or daphnia syphoning up the algae that had initially turned the water pea-soup green; now the water is once again clear. We have also spotted water boatmen, diving beetles and water louse – all potential food for dragonfly nymphs, who will hopefully arrive when the word gets out that there is a wonderful new pond habitat in the heart of Cabra.
The pond site in Cabra is secured by railings and a locked gate, but access for groups and schools can be arranged, and regular opening times will be commencing next spring.
Type ‘Cabra pond’ into YouTube’s search engine to watch a video of our pond come to life.
For more information, visit www.connectingcabra.ie
Michelle Nolan has a BSc in Amenity Horticulture from the National Botanic Gardens, and has worked in the Parks Department of a local authority since the mid ’90s. In the last number of years, Michelle became aware that she didn’t want to be a neat and tidy straight-lines gardener obsessed with pulling up every weed. With the changing world in terms of our natural environment, Michelle went back to college to study Environmental Management. This has changed her thinking on how we achieve our commitments to the public with a greater appreciation for nature. mnolanhome@gmail.com.
Stephen Shanahan has been passionate about gardening with nature since he watched Professor Chris Baine’s The Making of a Wildlife Garden in 1984. Stephen graduated from the National Botanic Gardens with a diploma in Amenity Horticulture. Stephen has HETAC qualifications in landscape design and AutoCAD. While working in St Joseph’s School for Deaf Boys in Cabra, Stephen used his extensive knowledge of plants to set up a horticulture therapy unit, before establishing his business, Hazelwood Landscapes, in 1996. He recently worked with the then Lord Mayor of Dublin Caroline Conroy leading a project to create the ‘Dawson Street Pollinator Corridor: Dublin’s Buzziest Street’.
instagram.com/hazelwood_landscapes; stephenpshanahan@gmail.com.
