Royal Edinburgh Community Gardens – June Update
Pictured below are volunteers Eddie and Rhona hard at work in part of the large vegetable garden at the North of the Royal Edinburgh Community Garden site. In the background can be seen the footbridge over Myreside Road, giving some local geographical context.
The gardens are producing masses of top quality, organically grown food at present, as shown in the second picture. Fruit and vegetables are shared amongst everybody who participates in the project; currently we are harvesting Mange-Tout, Broad Beans, Chard, Lettuce, Oriental Greens, Radish, Tomatoes, Herbs, ‘wet’ Garlic and Onions, with plenty more goodies coming on stream soon. There is also an abundance of soft fruit grazing to be enjoyed around the wooded edges of the gardens, my personal favourite being the ‘Grape of the North,’ the good old Gooseberry.
These tales of bounty have been made possible by huge effort over the past eighteen months or so, and during June we recorded our ten-thousandth hour of project volunteering! People from all walks of life have been drawn together through the challenge of taking this beautiful, yet neglected, corner of our city, and making it productive once more.
On the 24th June we were joined by volunteers from Lloyds banking group. Children from Craiglockhart Primary were also here for a morning in the garden, and were able to help show the corporate volunteers around the site before their day of hard graft laying new paths through the forest garden, and building pigeon-proof cages over the Brassicas and Strawberries.
Please see our blog page for details of planned activities at the gardens during July. We also have a new website coming online during the next month or so, more details to follow.
royaledinburghcommunitygardens.wordpress.com/