Taplin’s Fields: “Growing community” 

Members of Taplin’s Fields, the community garden in Bridgefoot Street, share their story of how they grew their group and their space.

Taplin’s Fields is an open community garden located in Bridgefoot Street Park in the Liberties. In the last couple of years, the space has gone from a construction sight to a beacon of the community – how did the community gardens come to be?

“So, there were flats here in the early 2000s, and then they were demolished, and the council’s intention was to redevelop the whole site for new housing,” Robert Parkinson, member and treasurer of Taplin’s Fields, tells The Liberty.

“Then the economic crash came. Now, I wasn’t involved at this stage, it was a different gang of people, but the site was fenced off. No housing development was happening, and then people decided to do guerrilla gardening. They got in through the fence, and there were various people involved.

“I think the council were aware of it, and kind of tolerated it, because nothing was happening. And they said, right, we may as well [turn the site into a community garden]. But the site was still zoned in the city development plan for housing.

“So, there was a campaign then to develop a park with a community garden in it, but that meant that they had to change the zoning… There was a sit-in in Dublin City Council head office. So, with the backing of a number of councilors, the council changed in the development plan, changed the zoning from housing to open space…” 

With the designs of architect Denis Foley, plans for how the layout of the community garden began to take shape. As development of the garden started, things got off to a slow start because of Covid-19; this didn’t stop the group from meeting off-site and doing what they could to start growing things for their garden. 

“We were meeting in the Thomas Abbey allotments, which are up there just off Pimlico. We had a spot there, then we were meeting down in the Robert Emmett Community Development Project. We were just sitting around, planting seeds up, and then people were taking them home and putting them on window ledges and all that kind of stuff.

“Eventually the park opened in May of 2022, and the garden did as well. So, we all had seedlings that were bursting out of their pots, and we got them into the ground.” 

Parkinson says the group welcomes new members wishing to come down to the garden.

“Some people are living very locally, just on Bonham Street or Thomas Street. I was a little further away, but there’s no limit, and if people want to come from wherever.

“I couldn’t care less if you’ve got a pair of hands or even one hand and you’re willing to come down and give us a hand – that’s all that matters.” 

The park around Taplin’s Fields is very much in the latest Dublin City Council style, with an emphasis on natural landscape, and the gardens follow suit. 

“We have a kind of live and let live philosophy with nature,” Parkinson says. “The philosophy of the park is biodiversity and sort of natural. There’s a lot of plants around here that might look, you know like they are, in some people’s eyes, weeds. 

“But actually they’re native wildflowers is another way to frame it. So the council and the landscape architect were very conscious. The whole philosophy of the park is recycling and natural regeneration. A lot of the materials that you see, they’re old building materials that were repurposed.

“So there’s a big sort of recycling, circular economy philosophy going on and we’re very much in keeping with that ourselves.” 

As a community garden, all are welcome and the garden also doesn’t charge any fees for joining.

“So we’re very deliberate that we don’t want any charge as a barrier to entry for people,” Parkinson says. “We’ve got quite a range of people. There’s a couple of people, without naming any names, there’s guy living in a hostel who comes down quite a bit. So there’s people from all walks of life coming together and only because our common interest is gardening.

“None of the people involved I was friends with previously, but we’ve become quite a tight group in a lot of ways. It’s inevitable!” 

Where did the garden get its name?

“One of the guys who was involved very heavily was a guy called Richie Taplin, the fella who we named the park after,” Parkinson explains. “He died in 2019. He was a real driving force in the campaign, not the only one, but a real driving force. He lived in the Bond [Oliver Bond flats]. So he was able to knock on his neighbours’ doors. I think he was a real energetic organizer kind of guy, and because he’s not around the connection with the Bond is broken. 

“I know people who are living up in Robert Emmett Walk over here and they keep an eye on the place if we’re not around. A couple of times they’d come down. I would like if people from the immediate vicinity came a little bit more.” 

As for sharing the work and the garden with the community, Robert says they’d love to have children from the local schools come down and share their love for the garden. 

“We’re trying to work with schools but we’ve made slow progress with it. If we could get the kids through a school’s programme to come down with a teacher. Someone who can look after them and then we could give them access to a garden bed. We did a little bit of that earlier on this summer but it never really gets the momentum to keep going. There’s an initial interest and then it falls away. 

“The key thing, I think, is that if they had a really enthusiastic teacher or a community leader or a parent who’s got a real interest in it. If you have someone like that, a lightning rod that people can gather around, that gets them interested.

“Habits are hard things to form.” 

The garden has a sense of togetherness. Rather than separate allotments, the place is one big site for everyone to share. For the members of the group this is very important: everything is shared.  

“Some people are much less interested in the community side of community gardening. Whereas I think – it’s kind of a cheesy line – but we’re not just growing plants, we’re growing community.

“And it’s an awfully cheesy thing to say, but it’s actually true. Like, far more important than the vegetables we get out of this is the friends I’ve made through it and that’s huge you know.

“The people down here have been really supportive coming down on a Saturday having that thing that you can kind of depend on and people you can talk to and unburden yourself.”