Grow Your Own Scotland

Allotment Consultation

H_Pank — Thu, 09 May 2013 09:48:37 +0000

Plans to simplify and overhaul Scotland’s allotment rules have been announced. Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead has launched a consultation to consider the shape of future allotment legislation. Further details on Scotland’s ‘Grow Your Own scheme can also be found here.

The Children’s Garden, Glasgow

H_Pank — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:38:23 +0000

Please help us save the Children’s Garden.

Glasgow City Council has just written to us demanding that by the end of April we need to chop down our willow tunnel and remove all fruit trees (despite them just coming into blossom);

Land Services are going to take over two of our lovely raised beds – despite us having paid for them and all the plants in them.

Please contact your councillor, MSP, newspaper, and anyone else you can think of – and please please – sign this petition, and get your friends to sign it. Come and visit the garden this weekend – and show your support

The petition can be found here http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hands-off-the-childrens-garden/

Exhibition at the Scottish Parliament – FCFCG, Trellis and the Community Land Advisory Service

H_Pank — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:56:19 +0000

Following a very succesful exhibition at the Scottish Parliament last week (22-24 January 2012) sponsoring MSP Jayne Baxter has put down a motion to support community farms and gardens: – as follows

‘City Farms and Gardens, More Than Just Growing
That the Parliament welcomes the work being done by the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens in partnership with Trellis and the Community Land Advisory Service to promote, represent and support community-managed farms and gardens across Scotland; recognises the diversity of the projects that they support in both size and type and that projects are shaped to reflect the community in which they are situated; pays tribute to the work and energy of what it understands is the more than 12,500 Scots involved in such projects every year across over 500 community, therapeutic and allotment garden projects; celebrates what it considers to be the huge benefits for health, learning, the environment, social enterprise and for children, families and volunteering; considers that other key benefits of such projects are regeneration and social inclusion for traditionally hard-to-reach groups; encourages people across Scotland to get involved in community farming and growing; applauds the ongoing work of the Federation of City Farms and Gardens, Trellis and the Community Land Advisory Service in supporting communities to come together to grow, and wishes community farm and garden projects across Scotland, such as the Community Gardens in Burntisland, every success in the future’.

Allotment debate in Parliament

H_Pank — Wed, 02 May 2012 08:25:07 +0000

The benefits of allotments and community growing projects were debated in Parliament on April 25 (motion S4M-01922) - read the text of the debate here

Funding announced for community growing projects in Scotland

H_Pank — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:44:58 +0000

The Scottish Government announced today that 43 groups across Scotland have been awarded over £6.9 million for the next three years under the Climate Challenge Fund (CCF).

The CCF helps communities reduce their carbon footprints and contribute to Scotland reaching its ambitious climate change target of reducing carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. The current round of applications, assessed by an Independent Grants Panel, also introduces the first successful intake of applications for the Junior Climate Challenge Fund which aims to allocate funds to projects that are run by young people.

Successful applications in the latest round of the CCF include:

Ross-shire Waste Action Network (RoWAN), Highlands, will receive £179,447 for their ‘R U up 4 it!’ project. A three year project that aims to reduce carbon emissions of schools and communities centred around Dingwall and Charleston Academies. This scheme will result in significant carbon reductions in participating households and schools
Sustaining Dunbar, East Lothian, will receive £450,000 over three years to enable behaviour change with a combination of projects supporting food growing, reducing food waste and composting, home energy saving, and travel behaviour change. The group aim to engage more people in practical projects and increase local employment opportunities
Moffat Carbon Approaching Neutral (CAN), Dumfries and Galloway, will receive £89,378 to lower the carbon footprint of young people, including school pupils, Guides, and Scouts. It will utilise a low carbon building conversion that incorporates a recycling depot and reuse centre, Scotland’s first ‘aquaponics’ greenhouse growing fruit, veg and fish in water, as well as a community garden and allotments

Environment and Climate Change Minister Stewart Stevenson said:

“Scotland’s ambitious and world-leading climate change targets can only succeed with the active involvement and participation of communities across the country. Therefore the initiatives we back under the Climate Challenge Fund are a great way of supporting behaviour change that helps drives down carbon emissions.

“We are tackling climate change from the grass-roots up and this latest funding round will support 43 projects with a total of £6.9 million support, demonstrating that communities in Scotland are serious about addressing their carbon footprint.

“The Scottish Government is already receiving applications for the next round and I look foward to hearing about the many exciting new projects from all corners of the country.”

Since its launch in 2008, the Scottish Government has made £37.7 million available to community groups through the CCF. Today’s announcement follows the confirmation of a further £30.9 million made available to communities by the CCF for 2012-15 and will have seen over 500 awards made across 365 communities