Blitz spirit revived for the climate change war

Published on Thursday 11 June 2009 10:14

DURING the Second World War it was a campaign to prevent Britian going hungry, but now the city's tenement dwellers are being urged to "Dig For Victory" once more.

The Edinburgh Community Backgreens Association (ECBA) is set to revive the wartime spirit that turned thousands of green spaces into temporary allotments in a bid to battle global warming.

The project is the brainchild of ECBA founder Greig Robertson, 39, who started the ECBA with a small pilot project in Gorgie/Dalry in 2005, and has recently expanded into Shandon, Polwarth, Marchmont, Newington, Easter Road and Leith Walk.

The aim of the association is to turn Victorian tenement backgreens – many of which are used as drying areas or bin stores and are overgrown with weeds – into mini-village greens.

Boosted by lucrative grants from community charities and green groups, including 80,000 from the Tudor Trust and 73,000 from Climate Challenge, the association hopes to revive another ten backgreens by the end of the year.

In keeping with the wartime theme they are now currently recruiting for the "Backgreen Blitz", a bid to attract more than 100 people from every community to transform their backgreens.

Mr Robertson said: "The original Dig For Victory campaign was a necessity when the trade routes were blockaded and shipping was reserved for the transport of armaments, so the government turned gardens, lawns, parks, bowling greens and sports pitches into allotments.

"The world is under threat again, not from war but from global warming, and one of the main causes of this is the obscene amount of food miles racked up by supermarket products.

"As well as providing the means to help people grow their own food, which has become very popular in recent years through chefs like Hugh Fernley Whittingstall, we give advice on buying locally grown produce."

The funding the group has received so far will allow it to install and equip ten community sheds – known as Co-Sheds – in each of the backgreens, with all the tools the community needs to create and maintain the area.

The ECBA will supply soil and timber to create a raised bed to grow vegetables, provide help with landscaping and may eventually see the installation of picnic tables and barbeque areas.

Mr Robertson added: "Some of these tenements have up to 300 families living in them, and if you were to flatten them out and transport them to the suburbs they would resemble small villages.

"We'd like to see these backgreens turned into the tenement equivalent of village greens, where the community can come together to maintain and enjoy a beautiful green space."

The ECBA is already running classes for greenfingered residents every week in each of the backgreen areas, and has also started a monthly "grow your own" class on the last Saturday of every month.