Butterfly Garden has blossomed in Swinford

The Butterfly Garden in Swinford is a special place. It’s a community project that has the aim of creating a space where all baby loss is acknowledged and a place where bereaved families and the general public can visit to reflect and remember.

It has certainly met that aim and more. It was recently awarded a National Pride of Place Award, along with several awards locally. It is probably fair to say it has even exceeded the expectations of the committee behind the project.

I was lucky to be able to sit and talk to a member of that committee, Natasha Durkan-Ginty, on a sunny December day in Swinford. Natasha is one of the founding members of the committee and was very much motivated by the loss of her own little angel, Mia.

Angelina: Natasha, thanks for talking to me. I know you are speaking on behalf of the wider Butterfly Garden group, but tell us a little about your background.

Natasha: I am from Killasser, just outside Swinford. I've been married to Vinnie for the last 13 years - we are together a lot longer. We have four kids, three at home - Gemma, Ava and Kian and a little angel called Mia. So they range in age from 16 and Mia would have been our youngest and she would be five and a half.

Angelina: You mentioned Mia, your little angel. Was that the starting point for the Butterfly Garden?

Natasha: It was one particular girl, Stephanie Maloney. She was only about three and a half months into her grief journey after losing her little girl, Sophia. She was writing a blog to help her. It was during Covid, so very scary times, very lonely times. 

"She started a blog and asked the question - 'I wonder, would there be any interest in creating something special for Little Angels?' And especially for older losses, where people wouldn't have anywhere to visit. She threw it out there and again it was other loss moms mostly that jumped on the bandwagon, myself included. I said, 'Yes, count me in'. We held a meeting here at the hotel in a very brief window where we were able to meet during those restrictions. About 20 people turned up. That was July 2020, a committee was formed and we took it from there. 

"A local architect, Martin Quinn, offered his services to help us design what it should be - a garden, area or space. We didn't know what it was going to be at that stage, what it was going to look like. He incorporated everything beautifully into the garden that's there today.

Angelina: So you have the architect - what happens next on the journey?

Natasha: We had gone to the local councillor, Michael Smyth, here in Swinford at the time, and we told him what our plans were, discussed bits and pieces with him, and he offered us some sites around the town. At the same time, the Brabazon trustees heard what we were doing too, and said if there was anything suitable up near the fairy trail that we could look at that too. 

"So we had options of where to go and we were shown where these sites could be. We went around to all the sites with the architect to get a feel for the area, and we were all drawn to the Brabazon Woods site, purely because it was beside the playground, which was children-orientated anyway. So it was special. We wanted something that was open to the public to be part of the community and didn't realise it would become a bigger community in the long term. But it was just amazing. We chose that site and then the architect said to work on fitting what we wanted into each area.

Angelina: How long did that take then to realise the vision from when you started to when you got the site?

Natasha: Very, very quickly. We met initially in July 2020. By Christmas we had plans. We had picked the site, we had plans in place. We had rough budgets at the time. But the work actually started in September 2021. Because it's a woodland, nothing could be cleared in that season. It had to be from September on. That was what delayed us in a little way. 

"We got a local builder here, Vinny Gavin, who helped us with all the groundworks and stuff like that. 

"Then we had to consider what did we want? We had to pick everything from complete scratch. None of us were project managers, but we became them by the end. But at the time it was scary because you don't know. But we had our engineer, John Kennedy, a local engineer, on board to advise us on the practical stuff.

Angelina: The garden gives people a place to come to - it's a massively important part of the community.

Natasha: We are very active on Facebook. We updated every little piece that was in that garden. We probably annoyed people, but every update was there because it was the community that came out and supported us financially as well as practically. We wanted to show them everything we were doing along the way. We built up a big following because of that and people were constantly watching. 

"When it opened then we'd be getting reports from other counties and stuff like that. We hold remembrance services up there now twice a year. It's the Light Up The Sky in August. It’s a thing of coming together to remember, names are read out, and we have little lanterns throughout the garden for your little one. It's very simple, very special, but very simple to organise, and so many come. 

"And then in October, we have the International Wave Of Light. So again, we just light up the garden pink and blue, so it's an international 24-hour wave of light. That means a lot again, because it's something like houses light up, you light a candle. It's just anything that you can participate in. Again, it's all just about remembering those little lives.

Angelina: I know you said to me that from the outset you always wanted to talk about Mia. She's part of your family, obviously. I'd imagine, Natasha, for you, this has been a journey for you as well.

Natasha: Definitely. I never had a problem with speaking, but I always looked for ways to remember her. It might be an ornament on a Christmas tree. It might be like this time of year and when I sign a Christmas card, she's on it. But she's part of the family and she always will be. This project became like my mini way of an extra way of remembering her. 

"I associate her with butterflies. It wasn't a personal choice. It was the Angel Memorial Garden at the beginning before it got a name and The Butterfly Garden was suggested. We put it on a Facebook poll to the public. The Butterfly Garden won unanimously. It was just something that was different. 

"The butterfly is a symbol of baby loss. The way you look at it, it's pure, it's fluttering, it's light. We always, even before the garden ever started, always associated Mia with butterflies at home. The year we lost Mia was that hot summer in 2018. There were butterflies everywhere. My kids at home had a thing they'd say, 'oh, look, there's Mia.' There was always a white butterfly around our house constantly. I never noticed the white ones before. It was just tiny little white ones and it was very fitting then that the garden would end up being The Butterfly Garden. But an awful lot of the ladies involved, especially, would associate them with butterflies.

Angelina: Recently, the Garden has been recognised at several award ceremonies?

Natasha: Just this year alone, we were nominated for two awards at the Cathaoirleach Awards through Mayo County Council. We attended the awards ceremony in Castlebar in March and we came away with one of the awards - the Social Inclusion Community Award, which was amazing. 

"We were only getting over that and then we got word that the local secondary school here, Scoil Mhuire agus Padraig, has a community award that's in memory of a local girl who passed away some time ago, the Catriona Armstrong Award, and it's an award for those impacting community life. We got word that we had won. We attended for that and we were on a high. 

"Then we got word that we had been nominated for the Pride of Place Awards, which was in effect taking it to the national stage. We worked closely with Mayo County Council, on what would be involved. We had our judges visit at the end of August. We were invited to attend the actual ceremony on November 10th and we won a special award for the garden.

"There were five of us there as representatives from the garden. We were all bawling because of what they read out about the garden, the judges’ comments on it, that was very emotional. We spoke about our garden again. I think people felt the emotion. They felt that this was something special. It was something different. Yet I think so many were touched in the crowd even if not personally, they knew somebody who had lost a baby or lost a pregnancy or lost a child. It affects so many households that you don't realise. So it was very emotional, but absolutely amazing.

Angelina: Are there any immediate plans for the Garden?

Natasha: Right in the middle of all of this, we were doing improvement works up at the Garden. Even though it's a year open, you're seeing things you can improve on now. And stuff that maybe at the time we didn't have the vision and maybe not the money to be able to do it. So now it's like, that could be improved. That would help the garden.