EDITOR'S WELCOME
Community is at the centre of Scotland Grows and we have built out from there, featuring your stories, your gardens, and addressing your concerns about gardening and growing in our gorgeous country.
Adding the Scotland Grows Show to our offering has meant we can feature even more stories from those gardening in Scotland in all capacities and allow our listeners more inspiration in a podcast format.
Our reading and listening audiences now span the width of the world, and it is somewhat amazing to think of the interest in Scottish gardens and gardening.
It is your emails, messages, comments on our socials, and reviews on the podcast which keep us motivated and encouraged so please don’t stop telling us what or who you’d like to see featured in the magazine or on the podcast - we are, of course, partial to a complimentary comment or two just to keep us going!
Scotland Grows has also allowed us to showcase the experience of our regular writers. To have our pages filled with expert advice and tried and tested tips from gardeners and garden designers living and working in Scotland makes all the difference. Their words are not generic: they all write from experience of gardening and growing in Scotland in the particular and diverse conditions which we experience across the country.
It’s why in this issue we have garden design planning advice for those living in coastal gardens from Katie Reynolds, and why Joanne Evans (welcome back Joanne) is encouraging us to get our summer bulbs planted. Both Katie and Joanne are experienced garden designers living and working in the Aberdeenshire area which allows us to benefit from their day-to-day, hands-on garden design eye.
In a similar way, when Eli Appleby-Donald tells us that in this issue that it is entirely possible to grow tomatoes outside in Scotland, it is because she has grown tomatoes outside on the east coast, and grown them well. Olivia Thomas offers advice for starting a cut flower garden from seed because she has done it as a flower farmer on the west coast.
Katrina Gelderbloem can offer inspirational ideas to reuse and recycle in our gardening because she puts her permaculture qualifications into practice every day in her food forest; Jordan Trainer can offer us easy care houseplant suggestions because he is actually surrounded by plants all day long in his Glasgow houseplant shop; and Dina Watt doesn’t dream up recipes using home-grown produce without first growing it in her own garden and testing out the recipes herself.
Similarly, as we have accompanied Andy Peasgood on his journey of creating a garden from scratch in new build property, this has been his journey in his own family house which he has shared, and continues to share with us, albeit from a rooftop in this issue. Just as Karen Stewart-Russell shares her gardening experience from growing roses and herbs, and testing garden gadgets, to reflecting on the power of garden journalling at the start of a new gardening year.
Expanding our expert pool this year means we can widen the range of content that we can bring you, and we welcome Kelly Ireland who joins us from her off-grid smallholding in the North East of Scotland. Kelly completed her Permaculture Design Certificate in 2022 and her first column in Scotland Grows magazine is all about seed growing, and the traumas we put ourselves through.
In another new regular column, Grass Roots Remedies will share practical knowledge about growing, foraging, and making remedies with abundant local plants. Their first column focuses on that wondrous medicine that is garlic and comes from Catriona Gibson, a medical herbalist and foraging tutor who has a herbal clinic in Glasgow.
Clare Harris from the Local Storytelling Exchange, who has contributed to the magazine previously, will bring us more good news stories in every issue about the difference people are making locally to their communities and the wider environment across Scotland. And our winners from the Grow Careers event both present their winning columns for us in this issue on the wonder of weeds and the link between gardening bacteria and our health. It’s a real privilege to hear from the next generation of gardeners at the start of their careers,
With all this experience and expertise at your disposal, we do hope you find something informative, useful, and inspirational inside every issue of Scotland Grows magazine, and that you will never be shy to get in touch if you would like to contribute something about your garden, your favourite plant, your top tips, your local community gardening group, or your local events - it’s how we will continue to grow our Scottish gardening community.
The other way we will grow is by your word of mouth, so please, as a subscriber, could you tell other people about Scotland Grows magazine and encourage them to join our community so we can expand our reach and the stories we can tell? As Scotland’s only dedicated gardening magazine we would love to be able to reach as many people as possible. Just direct them to our website at www.scotlandgrowsmagazine.com, or to any of our social media pages on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn where they can get the joining information they need.
Spring is bursting forth this month, let’s get gardening,
M.T. O’Donnell
Editor
Got thoughts on how we should evolve Scotland Grows magazine? Reach out by email or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn! We would love to hear from you, and you can hear more from us on the Scotland Grows Show - it's another great way to dig deep into what's going on in Scottish gardening.