Easdale Community Garden on TV1's Beechgrove Garden

Hiya again
Most of you will have heard that BBC TV1's Beechgrove Garden programme recently aired its episode about the new Community Garden at Easdale, Isle of Seil. It contains lots of useful information about gardening on the Scottish West Coast, as well as tips on sustainable methods and products: heat sinks, path "slabs" from recycled material, etc. etc.

If you haven't seen it or if you missed the programme, you still have a chance until Wednesday, 15th July 2009. A click on the title of this post will take you to the BBC page, where your blogger found the following information:

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In this episode, the whole production team cross the Atlantic...

The Atlantic bridge that is, just South of Oban, to help with the final stages of a community garden that's being created around the new community hall on the stunning slate island of Seil.

The 600-strong community have already raised money for, and designed and built, their own new community hall. The builders left all the rubble from the old hall all around the new one. Added to that, the proposed site of the community's new garden was the old dumping ground for the slate on its way from quarry to ferry; there is no soil there at all. The new garden is being built out of rubble and slate, and sits abut 50 metres from the ocean's edge. Not much of a challenge there, then!

Jim, Carole, George and Carolyn are on the island to help in the final stages of the community garden, but to also see some of the extraordinary and surprising gardens and gardeners on Seil.

The community gardens are gardens created by the community for the community with a little help from Beechgrove. The Beechgrove Community Garden Initiative has helped over 170 community gardens be created the length and breadth of Scotland since 1996.

Broadcast on: BBC One, 7:30pm Wednesday 8th July 2009

Duration: 30 minutes

Available until: 7:59pm Wednesday 15th July 2009

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Enjoy!

Things are growing and (almost) ready to harvest

Sweet peas and dark-blue lobelia grow along the tall fence on Dalintart Lane

Welcome back!
Things have been growing apace -- both desirables and less desirables...
Here are a few images to hopefully please your eyes, and to document the hard work that Graham has been putting in, planting, weeding, harvesting...

Graham manually eradicating cleavers

Sweet peas, fennel, herbs
Sugar snaps ripen under protective netting
Nasturtiums and potatoes
In the woodland part, fruit pods of a calla-like plant that should ripen into red berries (will try to keep you posted)

Sadly, lack of funding has held back development work on the top end of the garden. Seating and visually satisfying objects have been planned for that part.

A lone white aster, donated anonymously

Among other things, drainage coils need putting into the ground before anything more can be done. However, we're hoping to be able to progress things further soon.

Top end of the garden, looking rather bare

Enjoy the summer, and come back soon for more images and information on progress.

Bags of rubbish have gone

Hiya again

Last Tuesday evening, Kay and John and Graham shifted some builders bags full of rubbish that we lifted from the grounds some time ago. Now all that remains is for the council to come and lift the bags, which are waiting on the other side of that wall on the right of the photo. Should be easily accessible from there.The garden looks tidier and tidier. The potatoes, beans, sweet peas and some flowers are doing very well, despite some serious weed infestations.

Fruitful Scotland, Scottish Orchards, SEER Rockdust from Scotland

Hiya
Here are some excerpts from three sources of information that inspire the Lynnside Community Garden committee:
• Fruitful Scotland – Celebrating Scotland's Fruit Trees
Edited by John Hancox, this is a new publication by Scottish Orchards that celebrates "the resurgence of fruit growing and the interest in Scottish varieties old and new". Its slogan is FRUIT FOR ALL FOR EVER!
This may be a steep claim but we like to aim high.
To subscribe or advertise, call John Hancox on 0778 606 3918

Pear Blossoms in Deane Gallery Garden, Edinburgh, April 2004

• Scottish Orchards
John Hancox and his committee have been rolling out this initiative across Scotland to encourage communities and children to plant for a fruitful future.
Its aims tick lots of the boxes that the Lynnside Community Garden project has been pursuing, i.e.
- To promote planting and maintaining new and established orchards in Scotland
- To maintain and develop knowledge and skills and provide learning opportunities
- To help preserve the heritage of Scotland's orchards by establishing a national mapping database of orchards and fruit varieties.
- To encourage sustainability and biodiversity and improve the local environment
- To create markets for locally grown fruit
- To promote healthy eating and access to local fruit at affordable prices
- To promote planting of fruit trees into design of rural and urban environments
The patron is John Butterworth. Membership is free; donations are welcome.
In this context, the Lynnside Community Garden project has already received the donation of a cherry tree – thank you, Sarah! While we clear the garden grounds and decide exactly what goes where, the sapling has gone into a big pot and will be planted in a suitable spot later on.

We will be happy to receive donations of fruit trees – apple, pear, plum varieties that do well in this area. Please contact Graham or Margaret by leaving a comment on this blog.

Pear Blossoms in Deane Gallery Garden, Edinburgh, April 2004

• SEER® Rockdust®
According to their leaflet, Camera and Moira Thomson, founders of the SEER Centre, have "pioneered the use of SEER Rockdust to remineralise the Earth's soils and provide healthy, chemical free solutions" to soil and water pollution. Organic soil fertility is boosted by natural volcanic minerals and trace elements from 420-million-year-old, freshly ground, untreated volcanic rock blended from various Scottish quarries.
The product has been trialled at the SEER Centre in Highland Perthshire. The use of Rockdust has produced delicious, nutritious, healthy fruit, vegetables and flowers in difficult growing conditions.
Graham has been using the product to see if these results can be reproduced in our Lynnside Community Garden.
If you want to try for yourself, why don't you get your bag of Rockdust from Cakebread's Garden Centre off the Soroba Road in Oban.

The first strawberries harvested today from plants growing right next to the Lynnside Community Garden.

The "flying" shed

Hello again
Denise, one of the Lynnside Garden neighbours, has donated her old garden shed. Brilliant! Now we have somewhere to safely store tools and materials.
Neighbours Vivienne, "Cuishen", Donald and Graham performed a magical feat shifting the shed over the wire-mesh fence and into its new place down by the gate to the garden.
Well done, boys and girl!Looks good, don't you think?

Green and greener, watch it grow

Hello again

The rate of growth of plants in our garden is simply breathtaking. You can almost watch things grow these days.

It's quite hard work to keep the weeds in check. The butterbur is particularly tenacious...... it even grows right through the top-end of the tar path.In some parts, Graham has been using the strimmer. In other areas, manual eradication is more
appropriate to protect desirable plants and to try and keep the weeds out for good.

A clump of some kind of calla has been "liberated". It is already in flower.

But a few wild rose shrubs still need a helping hand to get rid of "sticky willy" and bindweed.
M

May impression

Hiya
Things have been growing.