COMMUNITY GARDENing
This issue, we’re celebrating five fertile years of Scotland Grows. I’ve only been writing for the magazine for a few issues, but every time I do it is with pleasure. That is because there is only joy to be had in visiting, photographing, and reporting on Scotland’s amazing community gardens.
Green and growing spaces are known to boost wellbeing – particularly in urban areas. As we struggle through heatwave after heatwave, the need for planting in our cities and towns is no longer a ‘nice to have’ – it’s essential. I’m using this anniversary issue to look at some truly inspiring encounters at community growing spaces across the country.
There’s a row of glasshouses in Hazelhead Park in Aberdeen inhabited by community groups of all stripes. Among them I find Bob Donald, who runs One Seed Forward. He’s known for his love of the humble tattie but his impact on his city and its inhabitants goes much further than that.
One of the charity’s regular activities is the ‘Garden in a Shoebox’ competition, encouraging schoolchildren across the county to grow their own tiny garden and enter the results. It’s just completed for another year with the winner, Mollie Bills, creating a Barbie-themed garden box. Bob says the competition has been so successful that he’s thinking about starting an adult version - anything that gets people growing is a plus.
One Seed Forward, which Bob founded in 2017, does everything from sharing seed potatoes and gardening in schools, to training others to set up their own community green spaces. It all started when Bob decided to give away seed potatoes. He set up a Facebook page and wrote to all the schools in Aberdeen, inviting them to get in touch if they wanted some potatoes to grow.
“There was a really big take up,” he says. Word spread and soon nurseries, Scout, and Girl Guide groups were getting in touch to ask for some. At one point that first winter I had 450kg of potatoes in hessian sacks in my front room. I had all these people coming to my house to collect them. I had to keep the heating off in that room, so it was freezing in there!”
From these small beginnings, One Seed Forward has grown exponentially, adding education programmes and distribution now spreads across the whole of Aberdeenshire and Moray. This year, the charity has given away 1800kg of seed potatoes and around 10,000 packets of seeds.
Bob adds, “We always tell people at the start that growing is hit and miss, just give it a go and if it doesn’t work out, try again. We don’t preach but we are there if people want to come and ask for advice.”
(additional reporting by Claire Prentice)
Find our more about One Seed Forward here.
Back in February, I visited Ravenscraig Walled Garden in Kirkcaldy. At this growing hub, local organisation Climate Action Fife was distributing just a few of 450 fruit tree saplings as part of its annual campaign, ‘A Fruit Tree for Every Garden in Fife’. It’s the second year they’ve done it, and the initiative has been a roaring success, continuing to run until 2027.
Graham Gulvin, 40, came from Dunfermline with his daughters Cora, 3, and Eilidh, 9. “We aren’t expert gardeners, but we wanted to plant fruit trees for our daughters,” said Graham.
Eilidh said, “When I was little we got ourselves an apple tree which we’re currently growing, so now it’s my sister’s turn.”
Julie Kennedy, 52, came along with her son Cameron. They picked a plum tree. “It’s amazing you get the opportunity to have this for free. We’re looking forward to having plums to eat in a couple of years.”
But it was Gil and Michael Allan, a couple who live on the northern edge of Kirkcaldy, whose passion for nature made the biggest impression. They had tried to get a tree in 2024 through the campaign but missed out due to its popularity. “This year, I got an email saying ‘you’re getting a tree’ – so I was quite excited,” said Gil. “We picked a Moray apple tree because of the blossom. The campaign is very important because a lot of people are concreting over their front gardens and making their back gardens so sterile. That’s just not good for nature.”
Michael added, “We’re on the edge of Kirkcaldy and we’ve got so much nature in our garden: butterflies, toads, frogs, foxes, even woodpeckers. People have lost the ability to connect with nature, like they used to. We let nature do its thing – we don’t need imagination to make a great garden; nature has its own imagination.”
Find out more about Climate Action Fife here.
At an event in April run by CEMVO Scotland’s Ethnic Minority Environmental Network (EMEN), the sun was splitting the sky and I met some wonderful people. It was held at Hamilton Claypits Nature Reserve, a haven of wildlife just yards from central Glasgow.
From volunteer Robert Alston, who lives nearby and has been helping out at the reserve since it began in 2016, to new recruits to EMEN’s programme of climate ambassadors, everyone felt that an attachment to the earth and its growing power was vital.
One encounter left me with three, now flourishing, tomato plants and the desire to find out more.
Sumayyah Javed was handing out seeds from Andalus, a mosque and community centre in Glasgow’s New City Road. It’s surrounded by concrete jungle but the folks there are determined to create a green haven. Their community garden, which has received funding from CEMVO Scotland, takes up a narrow patch of land at the side of the centre – one that is fast being populated with colour, flowers, and plants.
Already known locally for their honey – produced in small batches since 2017, thanks to beehives on the roof – the team at Andalus is now experimenting with other produce. Sumayyah says, “We’re working with Propagate Scotland to establish our community garden. We’re growing apple trees, and we’re hoping to grow okra as well – as part of an experiment to see if we can grow it in this colder climate.”
Part of the Okra Landrace project, run by Glasgow Seed Library, the experiment aims to adapt the okra plant to be able to grow in Glasgow’s climate, and to expand the types of foods cultivated locally to reflect the city’s diverse tastes. Those who took part in the project will report back on their success during the autumn harvest period.
I can’t wait to visit.
Find out more about Andalus here, and Propagate here.
Tucked within the walled garden at Kinneil Estate in Bo’ness is Sustainable Thinking Scotland CIC, which grows fresh food from raised beds to supply local food banks.
It’s run by two local men – Sean Kerr, a former lighting engineer, and Steve McQueen, a former warehouse worker – neither of whom had ever really gardened before. The idea came from a desire to make life better for the communities in which they lived. “We’re not goody two shoes,” says Steve, “we just wanted to do something.”
“Working here is a full-time lifestyle but I wouldn’t go back to a normal life now, even if the government casts some spell and they fix the food bank problem. We were down at one of the care homes in the area and it is full of ladies who are spending 80 or 90 per cent of their pension on frozen food. There’s a feeling there: will we let this happen on our watch?”
From a few beds in 2016, to a major operation which has produced more than 8 tonnes of fresh food, the principles remain the same but, says Sean, it has been a learning journey. “When we got on site, it was just a dumping ground. We had to fix the polytunnel, and we started with a wee space where we grew vegetables using pallets. There was no money, we found what we could to get it going. By the June of 2017, we’d made the first donation to food banks.”
Steve adds, “Back at the start, I would turn up proud as punch to the food bank with herbs and garnish and they were like, what the hell are our users going to garnish? Since then, we’ve been refining what we can grow, and what people will want to use.”
The space, though, isn’t just about supply. It’s a hub for the community – and it’s all completely free. “We run quarterly events, we say come along, bring the kids, there’s a bouncy castle, they get fed,” says Sean.
“What we do is a safety net, and that’s about more than the food production. It’s about not missing out.”
Find out more about Sustainable Thinking Scotland here.
When a trip to cover a story results in the offer of lunch, it’s never a bad thing. At Douglas Community Park, on the northern edge of Dundee, generosity comes as standard.
The park is sited in the middle of a residential area, next to the community centre which was recently saved from closure by a passionate local campaign. Developed by and for local people, the park houses allotments, play areas, a sports pitch and – crucially – a series of natural flood management systems that are part of a pioneering scheme from Scottish Water.
Margaret Hogg, 69, has lived in the area all her life and is the treasurer of the Douglas Community Spaces Group. She said, “The park was built because the people of Douglas got money from the National Lottery to do something in their area, and this was what they wanted. The park is part of the community. The flats here don’t have gardens, so it is a well-used space. The area used to be a wasteland after an old school burned down. Now, we put on events and a festival every summer and hundreds of people come.”
At a recent event, titled Oasis, locals came and enjoyed the sun with activities, water slides, and more. It was also a chance, says Development Worker Nick Toner, to consult residents on the next stage of the natural drainage project.
Dom McBennett is one of the team from Scottish Water working with the community to look after and monitor the scheme.
McBennett said, “Douglas Community Park is a really important step forward for us as a city because we’re managing to integrate a drainage system in with a public park. We’re grateful to the community of Douglas to allow us to do that; you can’t really tell the difference between the drainage and the park itself which is the way a multi-functional space should work.
“This is something we would like to introduce more of in the city and it’s really important to get the community’s buy-in on that. They’re the people who live and use the space.”
Find out more about Douglas Community Spaces here.
These stories are courtesy of Local Storytelling Exchange. If you would like to see your community gardening group featured in a future edition of Scotland Grows magazine, please do get in touch to mail@scotlandgrowsmagazine.com - we would love to hear from you!