This Earth Day 2026, we celebrate “Our Power, Our Planet” — a timely reminder that environmental progress isn’t driven by governments alone. It thrives through the dedication of communities, educators, and families caring for the places they call home.
This same principle has guided An Tairseach for the past thirty years, evolving the charity into a community and conservation project that farms in harmony with nature. We protect wildlife and habitat whilst also providing a safe place of natural beauty in the heart of Wicklow Town – alongside an eco-spiritual programme inviting engagement with the living planet.
Moira Byrne, Board Member of An Tairseach and former Environmental Awareness Officer with Wicklow County Council, has spent decades advocating for sustainability within the community. For her, the Organic Farm and Ecology Centre represents something profoundly rare: a place where environmental values are lived, not just spoken about: “To witness sustainability unfolding within a community, in real time, is extraordinary,” she reflects, “and here, it is there before you, tangible in the land, the wildlife, and the people who care for it.”
Human connection to nature lies at the heart of Earth Day, on 22 April. Action without connection rarely endures. As Moira has observed through teaching organic gardening at An Tairseach: “Once people get passionate about what growing their own food means to them, it becomes almost like an emotional thing — and then they can start understanding.”
It is understanding that the food on our plates, the soil beneath our feet, and the biodiversity around us are all one lifeline.
“People are not going to start living differently unless they’re passionate about it,” Moira says. “The only way they’re ever going to get passionate about it is if they come really close to it.”
Come close! Connect with the ‘eco’ – our home-in-common; join a Spring event or bring our garden into your kitchen with a leafy seasonal veg box from the Farm Shop.
