No Dig Policy at Dunmore Country School, Durrow, county Laois: Grow Your Own Vegetables

Discover the benefits of our No Dig Policy at Dunmore Country School, where you can cultivate your own vegetables in a:

  • Convenient and Cost-Effective Way: Enjoy fresh produce without the hassle of traditional gardening.
  • Environmentally Friendly Manner: Promote soil health and biodiversity with sustainable practices.
  • Time-Efficient Approach: Spend less time digging and more time enjoying your harvest.
  • Back-Friendly Method: Garden without the strain, making it accessible for everyone.

Join us at Dunmore Country School to embrace this innovative gardening technique and reap the rewards of homegrown vegetables!

Sustainable No Dig kitchen gardening and Natural beekeeping classes using well proven techniques that have stood the test of time.

Dunmore country school Tanguy and Isabelle de Toulgoët

The best sustainable gardening and natural beekeeping courses


People are recognizing the vital connection between health, agriculture, and our environment. At Dunmore Country School, we will help you grow tasty vegetables in a sustainable, intensive, and cost-effective way.

Our kitchen garden, situated on a one-acre plot with a polytunnel, is based on the traditional French 'potager,' or kitchen garden using lazy beds. We produce and preserve almost all of the vegetables and herbs we need for the year. We also incorporate flowers into our rotation system, which serves both a beautiful and practical purpose. It helps balance the garden, eliminating the need for any insecticides. 

Won't it take a lot of time?

When people come to talk to us about starting a garden, they often say, 'But it will take a lot of time,' or 'How will I control the weeds without spraying?' We have devised a simple, workable gardening system, the secret of which is to start small, get used to the techniques, reap the rewards, and then gradually increase the size of the plot. Our system shows you how to make the best use of a small piece of ground and how to sow vegetables in a way that requires a minimum amount of weeding. We will even show you how to make weeding easy using simple mulching techniques.

Growing and eating your own food

The main reason for starting a garden is to enjoy your own healthy, tasty vegetables. Tanguy and Isabelle will be happy to share their tips for cooking and preparing/preserving your vegetables.

Gardening Courses

We have set up a working kitchen garden on one acre with a polytunnel. You will learn how to produce your own food in a sustainable way. We use simple mulching techniques called 'No-dig.' Not only is it good for the soil, but it is also a great way to save time and your back.

Another interesting concept that we apply at Dunmore Country School is 'energy transfer.' Basically, you use every bit of organic matter produced by the garden and use it to fertilize the vegetable beds. Grass clippings, leaves, hedge clippings, comfrey leaves and even weeds are carefully harvested and reused elsewhere. It is a good technique to create areas with different levels of fertility. The poorest areas are called meadows, and they help maintain good overall biodiversity in the garden. In return, you will use no spray because the garden becomes balanced. It is a great system to improve biodiversity and maximize the use of carbon.

Cooking and preserving:

Our kitchen garden is not a market garden. We do not sell vegetables; they are produced for our own consumption. This is an important point because we are focusing on the ratio of energy spent to produce/yield. The trick is to maximize the yield by working with plants and nature. We will show you how you can grow two sets of crops per year. I said crops because in most of the beds, I would use interplanting and intercropping. This allows you to grow sets of crops that provide vegetables in succession. We believe that good recipes and preserving techniques are especially important. There is no point in producing top-class veggies if you do not know how to prepare them. We will share some of our tips. In some of the courses, Isabelle will cook fresh and seasonal vegetables for your lunch.

French Courses

We are both native French speakers who came to Ireland 22 years ago. Isabelle has been teaching students ranging in age from 5 to 70 years old for the past 20 years, both in primary and secondary schools and at language schools such as Alliance Française de Kilkenny. She also offers one-to-one classes and prepares students for the Junior and Leaving Certificate exams, making her very familiar with the curriculum. In addition to her teaching, she has two daughters attending school in Ireland. She also has a passion for gardening and cooking!
Pruning trees

Visit Our Online Store

Visit Dunmore Country School's online store, where you will find a range of courses and gardening tools. With courses such as Start Your Garden From Scratch, Month To Month Stroll in the Garden, Warré Hive Beekeeping, and French Classes, to mention but a few, there really is something for everyone!

In the spring, we are running online Live Zoom Gardening Courses, so you can still learn how to create and manage a beautiful kitchen garden, with our sustainable no-dig system!

Have a look around!

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Garden Consultancy:

Tanguy can bring his wealth of expertise in your garden and help you make a plan of action. Tanguy de Toulgoët has a strong profile as an environmentalist, educator and gardener. He is a tireless campaigner and advocate of sustainable gardening and has given lectures and talks all over Ireland.

Dunmore Country School have been featured in most of the Irish Newspapers (Irish Times, Irish Independent, The Business Post, Sunday Times, Farmers Journal) and internationally in publications such as the Washington Post.

 TV programmes such as "The secret garden" RTE, Nationwide RTE, Queerbet (Germany), Chouette prod (France TV) and books like "From the ground up" Fionnuala Fallon, Irish Gardens (Jane Powers).