Royal Edinburgh Community Gardens

Are you sitting comforably.......!

Hopefully this is going to be a long and happy story.

This month sees the first Development Partnership Group meeting of the Royal Edinburgh Community Gardens. We will then know which groups and individuals are going to be part of the pilot community. The pilot will trial 2 or 3 different community garden settings in the 3 acre site and build up an understanding of how to create an integrated food and gardening community. The learning from the pilot will then be taken forward into the development of the remaining 12 acres of NHS land.

Sean Jacques the Land Manager at the site is keeping a blog updated at - http://royaledinburghcommunitygardens.wordpress.com/

The Beechgrove Garden is to cover the Royal Edinburgh Gardens in their August programme. This will bring a landscape designer for the second phase of the scheme as well as raise the profile with a lot of gardeners and would be gardeners.

Several groups have already started to help with clearing the site, so we should start to see a difference. Sean Jacques, who was at one time the farmer for the Cyrenians farm is carefully taking the land forward to ensure that the biodiversity of the site is not lost. He is hoping to develop a forest garden on part of the site and is very much at home with permaculture.

Sean has looked in detail at the 3 acre site and has come to the conclusion that it supports 2 intensive vegetable sections a forest garden and a wild area. He and 2 designers are coming up with designs that will be shown at our first meeting with everyone who has expressed an interest.

This will be held on 18th March in one of the groups church hall. The agenda and details of the meeting will be sent out as soon as possible. If people are in agreement working groups will be formed at the meeting to come to find fair and equitable ways to take ourselves forward.

The meeting was successful with more than 30 people taking part and a further 10 expressing apologies for not making the evening. Further discussions will arise from this meeting and people are keen to get started.

Shona Robison, Health Minister officially opened the gardens on the 18th May and helped plant a tree that had been grafted from a tree in the original orchard on the site. "These gardens are a great example of staff , patients and the community coming together to get active and have fun."

Increasing numbers of groups and individuals have been working on the site and it is beginning to take shape. Now we have a drive to get the different projects to a stage for the Beechgrove Garden to film. A bog garden, an herb spiral, a living willow arch as well as paths and social areas have to take shape before the programme. Filming will take place on 9th to 11th August. All are welcome to help both before and during the programme.