GREEN IRISH ROAD TRIP
Greenan Maze are delighted to announce we have been chosen as a participant in Clayton Hotel’s Green Irish Road Trip 2022. One lucky family will be staying in the nearby Clayton Hotel Leopardstown and participating in a range of eco-friendly activities at our farm. Greenan Maze has been chosen as one of these activities for our ongoing commitment to limiting our impact on the environment and for encouraging biodiversity on the farm.
At Greenan Maze we believe in encouraging our visitors to find a love of nature. In an ideal world if we all love nature and our (local and global) environment maybe then we would all try to limit our impact on our place and our planet. At the farm we try to limit our impact with a number of specific measures and by following certain over-arching principles. We are part of LEAVE NO TRACE and we participate in The All Ireland Pollinator Plan and WE ARE THE ARK.
For the last 25 years we have rewilded 25 acres of our farm to encourage biodiversity and we have created large ponds, wildlife habitats, installed bee hotels on our nature walks and we try to encourage our visitors to do the same in any small ways in their gardens and at their homes. We have a fantastic nature treasure hunt on site highlighting how we all can help biodiversity in Ireland. We have also planted countless numbers of trees, mostly broadleaf and native. We try to encourage our visitors to learn our native trees on our fairy tree trail and encourage a love of nature in general by providing a beautiful bio-diverse site for children to enjoy.
Some specific measures we have introduced in our coffee shop include the following: we have installed refill water stations so customers don’t have to buy bottled water, we use compostable coffee cups but first we encourage our customers to use their own cups (see https://consciouscup.ie/) to reduce waste and then we recycle or compost our waste where appropriate. We endeavour at all times to implement the 7 R’s of zero waste: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rehome, Replant, then lastly Rot (compost). Our electricity is supplied by Community Power, Irelands first community owned electricity supplier. We use recycled paper for our nature treasure hunt. We know there’s so much more we can do at the farm and we are constantly learning new ways and new approaches to limit our impact on our beautiful place on this beautiful planet.
We have two natural mazes on the farm and our biggest maze has been replanted with 1500 broadleaf beech trees, grown locally. Three old farming museums highlight traditional crafts and skills and vintage horse drawn farm machinery. Our wild nature walk meanders by the ponds and wetlands and our nature treasure hunt includes a fairy tree trail. Our farm animals include heritage breeds of Jacobs sheep. We also have draught horses, turkeys, geese, ducks and hens and pigs and piglets. Families enjoy a fun day out at the farm and spend around three hours here relaxing with a picnic or use the undercover seating at the coffee shop. “Greenan Maze is a heritage hot spot and an antidote to urban living”.
We are looking forward to helping our special guests from Clayton Hotel’s Green Irish Road Trip and hope they enjoy a fantastic family-friendly break in Dublin.