All About Cork: Mayfield Tidy Towns group start flower planting

A local community group have been working to brighten up the area as the weather gets warmer, as the Mayfield St. Luke’s Tidy Towns group began a flower planting campaign.

Mayfield St. Luke’s Tidy Towns was established in May 2017 by Fine Gael councillor for the northeast ward, Joe Kavanagh, and since its inception, the group has been actively involved in community enhancement projects, including litter clean-ups, planting and painting initiatives.

All year round, they meet every second weekend, with winter meet ups usually focusing on litter picking. During the recent good weather from April, the group have been out tidying up flower beds and planters in the area and filling them with compost and new flowers, with planting prioritised on Old Youghal Road and in St Luke’s first.

The community group look after planting and re-planting flowers in the trough and boxes at St Lukes Cross, the three troughs for Mayfield Plants Positive at the Tank Field, Colmcille Avenue and Boherboy Road, maintaining the parklet outside the Frank O’Connor Library and planting in the bed on the Middle Glanmire road.

The group focus primarily on the public realm, Mr Kavanagh said, explaining: “This is a magnificent voluntary group and much of their ongoing excellent work goes largely unrecognised.

“People living in our community take great pride in their neighbourhoods and public spaces. This is experienced repeatedly in the level of enthusiasm and goodwill that is shown to the Tidy Towns volunteers by local businesses and residents as we pursue our various projects in the community.

“The Tidy Towns group engenders positivity, pride in our locality, and a determination to highlight the best of our local community.” As well as the volunteers, the group are ed by staff of the local hotel the Montenotte, as part of their giving back to the community strategy, and of the local youth club St Joseph's Community Centre “No Name Club” have also taken part, and the community group have also partnered with their local GAA team.

Now that the majority of the planting is done for this year, they’re planning to keep up with their regular litter picking and do a little bit of painting to keep the area looking well in recent weeks.

The group are always looking for new volunteers – they meet every second Saturday morning outside Keohane’s funeral home. If you wish to get involved and volunteer to help at any of the forthcoming projects you can message the Mayfield St Luke’s Tidy Towns Facebook page, or call Joe at 086 2307507.

Park board to be replaced

Labour councillor for the north east ward John Maher told The Echo he was “disgusted to see the communication board in Glenamoy Park removed.” He said that Cork City Council “are aware and will replace” the sign, asking the public “if anyone saw anything, please report to gardaí — these boards are installed to help younger kids, children with learning difficulties, children with autism and make our parks
accessible for all.”

Mr Maher added that he is hoping to have a new board placed in the coming weeks.

Stephen Scully, the communication liaison
officer in the council’s parks and recreation department, told The Echo: “The Parks Department recently purchased Communications Boards from Finding Charlie’s Voice (Charity) with the aim of having them installed at all our parks over the coming months. We commenced installation in a number of parks including at Glenamoy Lawn Park in Mayfield. Unfortunately, the sign was removed, but we will arrange a replacement shortly. The boards are colourful 1m x 1m boards that offer an assistive communication method, non-verbal, with images of play items.”

Dereliction pop-in event

Cork City Council’s next vacancy and dereliction pop-in event is to be held at Glanmire Library, Hazelwood Shopping Centre, from 11am to 1pm, on Wednesday.

Discussion topics might include incentives available for property re-use such as Vacant Property Grant, Repair and Lease Scheme and Living Cities, what to do if you own a derelict property, queries on ownership issues or planning, and reporting a derelict property.

No booking is necessary to attend.

ROAM Mayfield events

Since mid-February, Mayfield and Knocknaheeny-based older people’s groups and schools have worked with Cork artists to map and re-imagine their surroundings as part of the ROAM creative programme.

Poems, paintings, works in clay and cardboard have been used for two temporary exhibitions at Mayfield Library and The Canteen, Knocknaheeny. 

Events and activities will take place in each area this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The Mayfield events include a launch on Thursday from 11am to 1pm at the Frank O’Connor Library, Old Youghal Rd.

On Friday there will be an exchanges event encouraging communities to travel to each other, taking place from 11am to 4pm, also at Mayfield Library and on Saturday there will be a day for families and friends, with workshops and music in Mayfield Sports Centre on Old Youghal Rd from 11am to 4pm.

Irish preschool open day

A Glanmire Irish language pre-school, Naíonra Ghleann Maghair, is having a lá oscailte or open day on Thursday from 12pm to 1pm at Glanmire Football Club. All are welcome. Limited spaces are available for ECCE and NCS programmes in the 2025/2026 school year. [email protected] or call 087 9669090 to book a place.

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