Our waterways are in crisis. Only about 1% of Ireland’s rivers and streams are pristine; down from nearly 15% in the 1980s. Despite a legal obligation to achieve “good” status for our waterways by 2027, we’ve hovered around only 55% of waterways at this status since 1987. The targets aren’t just to keep within EU law; they are essential to being rebuilding habitat for vulnerable aquatic wildlife and for helping support Irish biodiversity and for our own water quality needs. So if we’ve tried for nearly 30 years to achieve improvements in water quality with essentially zero success, why should…
-
-
Article by Emma Hart for the Farmers Journal on farm-scale water measures: https://www.farmersjournal.ie/farm-programmes/footprint-farmers/wading-into-wetland-solutions-on-footprint-farms-784838
-
When we look at water quality we often forget that it’s not just related to what we dump into rivers or streams locally that is the issue. Water quality in our rivers and streams will depend on what happens within the wider catchment; all of the land use from the tops of the surrounding hills down to the river bed and everything in between. Not only that, but on a wider level, our purchasing habits have a direct bearing on water quality far away from our local area. The mindmaps below have been prepared as part of webinars on ecology,…
-
Our waterways are in crisis. Only about 1% of Ireland’s rivers and streams are pristine; down from nearly 15% in the 1980s. Despite a legal obligation to achieve “good” status for our waterways by 2027, we’ve hovered around only 55% of waterways at this status since 1987. The targets aren’t just to keep within EU law; they are essential to rebuilding habitat for vulnerable aquatic wildlife and for helping support Irish biodiversity and for our own water quality needs. So if we’ve tried for nearly 30 years to achieve improvements in water quality with essentially zero success, why should we…
-
Video from Feidhlim’s talk at the recent Skerries Eco Night – Turning the Tide Together – what can we do; Sept 28th 2024. Slides to this event are below:
-
Posted on 24 Apr 2023 by Green Foundation Ireland, in this talk Feidhlim Harty gives an overview of pond design and construction to help landowners and local communities create new ponds. Ponds provide valuable habitat for wildlife as well as beautiful areas to walk near and watch nature. We explore siting, sizing, shape, edge slope, depth and aftercare; looking at the steps needed to get from discussing the initial idea through to design, construction and finish.
-
Féidhlim Harty explores the marriage of science and art that brought about an ethical and principled design revolution. First published on December 18, 2020 in Horticulture Connected. Link below. Permaculture; that’s, like, organic gardening but with more of a hippy twist, isn’t it? Well, if that’s what you want in your garden, then perhaps, but really it’s a lot broader than that. It is essentially the science and art of designing sustainable systems of any sort that support human needs while protecting the environment. The term permaculture derives from permanent agriculture or permanent culture. It is a design approach that…
-
Permaculture offers a design approach for meeting human needs without impacting negatively on the natural world. Rooted in core ethics and guided by an evolving set of permaculture principles, it can be a wonderful tool for any design process, from a back garden to a greening of your city. Inherently, permaculture design has the natural world as an overt focus. Thus we can use this as a way to design landscapes, gardens, farms, businesses or communities that are both productive (yielding the things we want to achieve) and regenerative (for people, planet and the future). Edible landscaping, as the name…
-
Published in greennews.ie February 3, 2020 (link below). Over the past three weeks, as in all election cycles, we have become accustomed to the knock at the door from canvassers or candidates themselves are they vie for our number one at the ballot box. We have asked leading climate and biodiversity experts to tell us the key policy asks that they have raised with candidates when they come a-knocking. Next up is Féidhlim Harty, the director of FH Wetland Systems, an environmental consultancy company specialising in wetland and willow system design based in Co Clare. He is also the author…
-
In the first of a series of environmentally-focused landscape articles, environmental consultant, Féidhlim Harty explores how edible species can be incorporated into designed landscapes. As the coordinator of Garden of Eden Projects Ireland, he has a particular emphasis on community projects, but the same plants, pointers and principles can be applied to any garden or landscape design First published in Horticulture Connected on Oct 1st, 2019 (https://horticultureconnected.ie/horticulture-connected-print/2019/summer-2019/insight-summer-2019/the-edible-landscape/) We have the potential to add edibles throughout our parks, housing estates and wider landscapes. Hedges can be grown from Corylus, Rubus and Ribes cultivars as well as the more familiar edibles such…