As part of its twenty fifth birthday celebrations and as an event within the Galway Climate Inspirations Festival, the Tuatha volunteers of Terryland Forest Park will host an open day from 12pm until 3pm on Sunday September 14.
There will be an array of activities for people of all ages to enjoy its mosaic of woods, meadows, waterways and trails located only a short distance from the centre of Galway city.
The programme will include arts and crafts workshops, face-painting, a children’s pop-up library and guided tours of the park’s eco-heritage trails. Visitors are also encouraged to picnic on the day.
A special exhibition will feature paintings on the theme of the forest park that were undertaken by the children of three neighbouring schools twenty five years apart.
In February 2000, the pupils of St. Nicholas’ Parochial School, Scoil San Phroinsias and Castlegar National School painted their ideas on how this new type of urban biodiversity-rich park would develop.
In April and May of this year, artist Helen Caird went to the same three schools to ask the current children to paint their vision on what Terryland Forest Park would look like in 2050.
Another activity will give due recognition to the thousands of volunteers who planted the first native trees and wildflowers in the spring and autumn of 2000 by allowing visitors to plant thousands of native species of bluebellson Sunday.
Furthermore the organisers are also offering at the event a limited number of oak and hazel seedlings, that were grown from the seed of the trees planted in 2000, as well as bluebell bulbs to those original planters of 2000 in appreciation of their pioneering efforts to create Ireland’s first community-local government urban native tree woodland all of those years ago.
— The Park Entrance is located at the junction of Headford Road and Quincentenary Bridge road.
