The Garden
The courtyard garden adjacent to the library is a space for students and staff to sit down, listen to the trill of birdsong, the gentle rustle of the leaves, and the quiet babble of the fountain. It's a space to take a break, a space to breathe, a space for mindfulness; it's also a space for learning and innovation.
The History
The garden space you see today was born from collaboration. The garden was first developed at the foundation of Tallaght campus in 1992 by John Heaney. It was further nurtured and developed by Linda Bennett, a staff member at the Library, into a sustainable sensory space for students and staff, featuring flora of different shapes, sizes, colours, and textures.
The Library Elemental Living Lab was the result of a number of initiatives on the Tallaght campus. Gerry Stockil purchased a range of water quality sensors that are used by students to measure water quality in the Poddle river adjacent to the college. These sensors are also being used by Martha Burton with second year students on the BEng Sustainable Energy programme. Student projects supervised by John Fox, Andrew Donnellan and Thomas Murray from Electronic Engineering have focused on the development of air quality and water quality measurements systems linked by a LoraWAN network. Following on from these projects and the Sustainable Sensory Garden project run by the Library, Gerard Ryder and Niamh Plunkett are developing a garden-based living lab concept as a natural evolution of these ideas.
The Library Elemental Living Lab project will develop units of learning for our students around air quality, water quality and soil health. Students will measure and monitor the garden's health through these lenses, collecting data via open-source sensors and 3D printed lab equipment.
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
