Trinity chefs go hyperlocal, serving herbs grown on campus

Posted on: 09 June 2025

The kitchen garden is part of Trinity Sustainability’s work on developing a sustainable and healthy food plan for campus. Prof Jane Stout, VP for Biodiversity and Climate Action says:

“As the climate and biodiversity crises disrupt our food supplies, for example through more adverse weather events, we will need local food we can easily access. So when electricity is down for example, as happened recently in Spain, or when ports like Holyhead are blocked, as we saw over Christmas, there is a risk of food not arriving on campus. The kitchen garden is a first, small step demonstrating hyperlocal solutions that help to secure our food supplies.”

Last year Trinity bought 818 punnets of strawberries and 3,100 bags of herbs, so the garden is certainly not going to meet Trinity Catering’s food needs.   It is however an important pilot programme that sets out to test if food growing on campus is feasible.

Healthy Trinity Manager Martina Mullin with PhD students Luke Quill and Diego Bianchi planting the garden

Students and staff from Trinity as well as some visiting students from XL Excelia Business School in France planted the herbs and fruit trees.  Botany PhD students that took part in the planting, Luke Quill and Diego Bianchi, will be maintaining the kitchen garden over the summer.  Luke adds “so much of our health is influenced by what we eat - healthy food from local communities can’t get closer than this.”

Prof Laurent Muzellec, Dean of Trinity Business School adds “Trinity Business School is delighted to support this exciting new initiative, which reflects our commitment to sustainability. The rooftop kitchen garden is a small but tangible step towards building a more responsible future.”

The kitchen garden was inspired by a visiting professor in the School of Medicine, Prof Rupa Marya.  She leads the Farming is Medicine movement in California, an organisation that runs a one-acre rooftop farm in Oakland that supplies 9,000 kgs of fresh, free produce per annum to the local community.  Irish inspiration for the kitchen garden comes from Irish groups like Talamh Beo and the Feeding Ourselves network. 

The Trinity Beo initiative is funded by Trinity Business School and Catering.

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