Nostalgia: A green-fingered community

WITH a new year comes the chance to get involved with new projects, and gardening is always up there with the best of them.

Even more green-fingered residents living in the Capital could be given the chance to embark on a new hobby as part of an innovative council scheme.

Residents living in high-rise flats could be given their very own community gardens as part of a unique project which aims to build on Edinburgh’s love of allotments.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The scheme is designed to encourage residents to grow their own produce, which they can use for themselves or even sell, and will spruce up council-owned green spaces.

Attending to Edinburgh’s allotments have long since been a popular pastime amongst green-fingered residents, many of whom do not have their own gardens.

In 1978, the Frost family posed for photographs working together on their well-kept allotment in Meadowbank.

The Meadows was also home to a popular allotment plot at one time, with eager growers out checking their plots in 1964. The landscape was changed dramatically in March 1966, however, when the allotments were bulldozed.

The shell of an old bus used as housing also shared some space with a city allotment site, making an unusual addition to the city scenery in 1959.

Scenes like the vandalism at allotments in Lauriston in December, 1963, are unfortunately not uncommon, but it is hoped giving the community responsibility for their own plots as part of the new council project will help to encourage civic responsibility.

The new community garden project, in the Calders, Dumbryden, Murrayburn and Hailesland, aims to transform green spaces owned by the council in city neighbourhoods.