A vineyard between heaven & earth

The community surrounding the Ashford Estate is an integral part of our history, with continuous fundraising efforts to support local organisations, volunteer days spent with local charities and partnering with a charity of the year to support them. As we look to the future and the continuation of our sustainability journey, we are working alongside our local community of Cong with the aim of becoming Ireland’s very first green destination.

Together with The TreadRight Foundation, we strive to #MakeTravelMatter.

We work to preserve the biodiversity and natural habitats on the Estate with the introduction of a bug hotel in our gardens and bat boxes throughout the Estate, to protect dwindling species of bats. We also collaborate with a local tree surgeon to develop a manageable action plan to care for our vast tree population. We are proud to grow our own produce in our polytunnels and forage for seasonal ingredients across the Estate. In the future, the addition of four beehives with an indigenous species of bee will allow us to produce our own honey while protecting the bee population. 

We are continuing our efforts to phase out single-use plastics by 2022 - so far we have saved 57,000 bottles from landfill - and reducing our food waste in partnership with Winnow.

We have also introduced a system called Accuvio to allow us to monitor our energy consumption, waste generation and water use. We harvest our rainwater to use across the Estate and have introduced renewable sources of energy.