Magento: How can I show the category description in the left sidebar?

Question

I want to display the category description in my left sidebar instead of the main column.

I added this to my catalog.xml:

    <reference name="left">
        <block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.leftnav" after="currency" template="catalog/navigation/left.phtml"/>
    </reference>
            <reference name="left">
        <block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.catdes" after="catalog.leftnav" template="catalog/navigation/description.phtml"/>
    </reference>

And I created this file: catalog/navigation/description.phtml

    <?php
$_helper = $this->helper('catalog/output');
$_category = $this->getCurrentCategory();
   ?>
        <?php if($_description=$this->getCurrentCategory()->getDescription()): ?>
<div class="category-description">
    <?php echo $_helper->categoryAttribute($_category, $_description, 'description') ?>
</div>

There is no result at all. What could I be doing wrong?

Answer 1

The following solved this issue for me.

echo Mage::getModel('catalog/layer')->getCurrentCategory()->getDescription();