THE ORGANISERS of a Co Donegal flower festival have called on people to bedeck their gardens and the banks of Lough Foyle with sunflowers in memory of a family killed in a drowning tragedy.
This year’s Redcastle Sunflower Festival has been dedicated to the memory of John Mullan (49), his son, Tomás (14) and six-year-old daughter Amelia who died when the family car skidded off the road at Quigley’s Point last August following a day out in Derry.
Geraldine Mullan survived the disaster which claimed the lives of her husband and children after she managed to climb onto the roof of the car before she was rescued.
The Redcastle Village Association has called on people to plant sunflowers in their gardens and along the banks of the Foyle so that they can be seen in time for the first anniversary of the tragedy.
The organisers are staging two competitions as part of the festival, one to grow the largest sunflower by the end of September and a photographic competition entitled Nature on My Sunflower.
The family were well-known and popular in their home town of Moville where Mr Mullan owned a garden centre.
Mrs Mullan, a nurse at Letterkenny University Hospital, said she felt “humbled” that the people of Redcastle had chosen to honour her family.
“John would have run the garden centre here in Moville so he would be absolutely delighted that people far and wide are now going to be planting the seeds.
“Amelia and Tomás would have entered this competition actually last year. We had great fun during lockdown. It was one of their lockdown projects, planting the seeds and watching them grow,” she said.
The Inishowen woman told Donegal’s Highland Radio her daughter Amelia managed to plant enough seeds for 31 pots of sunflowers.
“I planted my sunflowers there on Sunday from Amelia and Tomás’s sunflowers that they had planted last year; that’s the whole thing to do with planting new life,” she said.
Festival organisers can be contacted at: www.facebook.com/Redcastlevillageassociation/
