Daffodils and Tulips

Initiated 2019

Residential gardens start displaying colourful flowers from late winter. Johnstown's public spaces however tend to remain rather dull in comparison with large expanses of green verges, lawns, hedges, and trees. Therefore in 2019 we embarked upon a Spring project to inject some early colour and vibrance into Johnstown's public spaces.

We engaged with residents to ask for suggestions on where we could plant Spring Bulbs and gathered quite a few responses.

15 planting locations were selected along Johnstown's major routes so that their presence would be highly noticeable.

Tulips and daffodil bulbs were chosen for the trial simply because they create high impact, provide vivid pockets of colour, are reasonably low cost for high quantity, and could be planted by persons of any age and ability.

1,500 bulbs were collected from Beechmount Garden Centre and although these bulbs are of no benefit to pollinators they did bring about awareness of the lack of flowers locally.

Our intention was also to host mass planting to engage the community in enhancing these areas but due to the Covid restrictions, in place at the time, individual family pods completed the planting.

Our aim going forwards is to revisit and build up these planting areas with pollinator-friendly plants.

2021

Of the 19 sites planted in 2019 some are flourishing like these at our Welcome Sign on Metges Road South but now our focus is only on pollinator-friendly bulbs.