May Bush Festival takes root across the county
Council arts officer Liz Burns, Cliona Connolly of Wexford County Council), Aileen Lambert and Michael Fortune planting a May bush at Wexford County Council’s offices last Friday morning
Micheal Óg Ó Fiach from Wexford Town and Tony Stafford from Barntown with their May bushes
Betty and Mick Breen from Beech Grove, Castlebridge, collecting their May bush from Aileen Lambert
The seeds of this year's Wexford May Bush Festival have been well and truly planted throughout the county over the past three weeks. Organisers Michael Fortune and Aileen Lambert from Curragraigue say that they have been 'blown away by the positive and enthusiastic response' received since they offered people the opportunity to collect their very own May bushes for planting ahead of the festival.
Traditionally on May 1 people across the county used to decorate a May bush with ribbons, seasonal flowers and coloured egg shells and this was said to bring good luck and welcome the summer season. Now Michael and Aileen have revived the tradition and it's getting a great response.
'We started the festival 3 years ago, as we grew up with the tradition ourselves, and deliberately established it as a ground-up county-wide event,' Michael explains. 'Rather than parachuting a "festival" onto a place where there was no foundations or connections we wanted communities and people to take ownership and by simply putting up a May bush, you are part of the festival. Every year, bit by bit people connected more and more with the idea, however the idea of planting the county with these bushes really caught peoples attention.'
The pair saw people calling and texting at all hours of the day and night to collect their May bushes. A whopping 150 May bushes found new homes and they say they could have shifted another 150 if they had them!
All of this was done on a voluntary basis with people calling to Michael and Aileen's home to collect, but in typical Irish fashion, they always kept a couple in the car when going to work or on school runs and dropped them of at shops and houses around the county.
'This is one of the lovely things about this project; the aspect of goodwill,' Aileen said. 'People took bunches and distributed them in their own communities while St Aidan's Garden Centre in Gorey and the Irish National Heritage Park in Wexford acted as collection points. There was a two-hour window for pickup of May bushes in the Heritage Park, but within an hour they were all gone!'
One thing that struck Michael and Aileen was the amount of people who connected with the project having remembered putting up a May bush with their own parents or neighbours when they were younger. Now they are delighted to be able to pass the tradition on to their own children and grandchildren.
