Volunteer Garden Group at WHALE Arts - 6 month report

VOlunteer Garden Group

6 Month report June - December 2020

our garden The WHALE Arts Community Garden is a communal space for all to enjoy in the Wester Hailes Community.

In July 2020, with a new Community Garden Coordinator on board and after much risk assessing, we restarted our Garden Volunteer

group

safely

outdoors.

The

COVID-19

12-week

lockdown had seen the garden become overgrown and a less attractive or usable space for the community. Without garden maintenance, we also started to experience vandalism and litter.

Over the past 6 months we have achieved: 611

hours

of

participations

garden (vs.

70

volunteering

140

and

participations

June-

December last year)

16 Garden Volunteer participants (vs. 8 last year) 52 coordinator-led garden group sessions 30 group sessions held in garden by us and our partners for children and families

3 new seating areas installed by group for locals and groups to use

18 hours of council community payback in garden Increased use of the garden by locals

1

new play platform structure with a parachute

for kids built and painted by the garden group A

garden

plan

developed

collaboratively

between the garden group and staff Decrease in vandalism and litter New indoor growing areas created for volunteer group continuation over winter to aid garden

Overwhelming levels of dedication, creativity and passion from everyone involved!

History The

back

community

of

WHALE

hub,

until

Arts the

was

a

waste

Westburn

CAN

ground project

surrounding in

2016

the

which

developed the area into a community garden.

The garden has been led by local volunteers for a number of years, with some input from freelance gardeners and artists along the way.

2016

2018 2019

2020 refresh In June 2020 we employed a Community Garden Coordinator, Rob Davidson, in this new role to run our Garden Volunteer Group who have improved the upkeep and maintenance of the garden.

In this time the group has installed more seating areas and play zones for the community, diversified garden horticulture through new garden strategies including seasonal bulb planting, garden furniture painting projects, laid new soils, landscaped new growing areas, strimmed, sowed, propagated cuttings and more.

Photography credits: Ollie Benton

2020

After lockdown, I started volunteering in the Whale Arts Community Garden and I had the opportunity to connect again with nature and doing something productive, not only for myself, but for others too. I also met a lot of people from different ages and backgrounds, and finding out that we all experienced the lockdown in a similar way was a big relief for me.

- Julia, Garden volunteer

Adult wellbeing COVID-19 meant that all indoor groups and activities could not run safely indoors for adults for most of this year.

Improvements were made to the garden since starting again in July 2020 - as well as making a huge difference in local people's wellbeing indirectly through having a usable greenspace, and directly through the group leadership.

This has all been made possible through the leadership and support of our new Community Garden Coordinator role.

From a survey filled out by our garden group volunteers, the main thing they got out of the group was feeling happier in general which scored highest as an option.

Most volunteer participants felt it was a good way to meet new friends and get outdoors during COVID-19.

The current average age of adults attending the group is 40 years old, and just over half are male.

There was a significant improvement in wellbeing since volunteers started in the garden group.

Most volunteers either felt not good at all or at best they felt okay before they joined the group. After participating in the group most volunteers are either feeling okay or great (see pie charts below).

Before

After

Photography credit: Alison Johnston

II am really grateful for having spent time with the garden group. I love that it is such a welcoming space - I feel like we can talk about all sorts of things, and taking time to check in with each other.

- Garde.n group Volunteer

Youth activities Kids club smARTies at WHALE Arts for ages 612 has held 10 weekly collaborative artist and gardener-led sessions. Partly funded by Police Scotland this aimed to help influence and educate youths about the important role greenspaces play in local areas and about environmental art.

Expecting Something, by our partner Starcatchers, is a group for young mums, babies and toddlers living in Wester Hailes.

Prior COVID-19 they regularly ran indoor sessions at WHALE Arts. They have provided weekly sessions on Thursdays since August 2020 using the WHALE Arts garden for a range of activities including tie dye clothing reuse, seasonal creative activities and outdoor drumming sessions.

Above: smARTies kids reused plastic bottles to create outdoor art on our eco-build shed (see photo, right).

The garden at WHALE has enabled our Expecting Something group to continue through the pandemic... we have now seen the wonderful benefits for parents, babies and our staff. We intend to continue being out there as much as possible even in a world with no social distancing and when we can work inside safely! The garden has improved so much and we are very grateful for all the efforts of the garden team and everyone at WHALE for creating such a cool and safe space for us to work in with parents and babies from the Wester Hailes area. Can't wait until spring time!

- Kerry, Expecting something Project Coordinator Photography credit: Starcatchers (left), Alison Johnston (top right)

Connecting our kitchen Since COVID-19 at the end of March 2020, the kitchen team has produced over

3000 freshly cooked hot meals and

delivered these to the community as part of our weekly free Community Meal.

Additionally, freshly baked desserts and cakes were cooked more than half of these weeks.

For some of the meals we used fresh local grown produce from our garden. Feeding plants that have contributed to the meals included: Onions, herbs including Thyme and Oregano, Kale, Broccoli, Raspberries, Strawberries, Crab Apples and more.

Using funds we received from The Stafford Trust we have invested in new feeding trees for our garden including:

Peach, Plum, Cherry, Sea Buckthorn, Saskatoon, Tayberries, Logan Berries, Hazelnut, Cob, Jostaberry, Quince, Mirabelle and Pear.

Photography credit: Verity Combe

I am amazed by the abundance of veg, herbs, fruit trees and berries that with a bit of love and care will hopefully keep the community kitchen stocked in the years to come.

This has been an exciting part of volunteering for me as it has made me aware of the importance of sustainable food sources for community groups.

- ALison, Garden group Volunteer

All of our meals are currently plant-based or vegetarian meals and we aim to promote healthy and eco-sustainable living to the group and local community.

The garden will help enable our kitchen to become more self-sustainable through using this produce in 2021. We hope to keep growing this efforts through:

-> Growing more feeding produce outdoors, and also indoors, using our new spaces

-> Continue to introduce an array of local feeding plant species and nurture our new plants

-> Utilising our composting heap more - from the kitchen to garden

-> Keep learning and educating ourselves on best practice through training and by linking ourselves to similar organisations more

Photography credit: Kevin O'Rourke

Garden biodiversity We have already spotted several species in our community garden this year, from the orange-tipped male butterfly (pictured above) captured - a rarer sight in Scotland than in the rest of the UK!

In our garden we have had a tree bees nest pollinating our fruit for us which we left to dance and wiggle away. Also we had many butterfly species, grey squirrels, foxes, toads, wrens - and we're sure there's more to discover!

We

hope

to

introducing

keep

new

improving

plant

our

species,

garden

make

biodiversity

suitable

in

2021

adjustments

-

by

and

continue to record these exciting and beautiful sightings! The garden does not use chemicals or pesticides and we stick to being organic and ethical where possible.

Using technology more, such as mobile app

iRecord, will enable us to

record species sightings to help inform at local and national levels, and help educate our community.

Garden Volunteers' wish board What we would like to make possible in 2021...

....more dive rsity of food veget ables, mushroom s, medicina l herbs and make it more peda gogical for users and visitors!

h Alison's it w n o o g To ls insect hote t u o b a s a ide ith kids, w s ie it iv t and ac al garden, ic t r e v a d to buil succulents e t a g a p o r to p m or swap e h t ll e s d an s... ther plant o r o f m e h t

or ...selling seeds bs (and packaged her creating the this packaging for graph using the riso printer)!

I would lik e to see a glasshous e, a forest garden, m ore facilitie s, sculptures , murals, b ioconstructio ns, spots f or relaxing a nd use....

in t to work a e r g e b Would h the local it w e u g lo dia e them in g a g n e o t y communit munity m o c e h t r o working f e could W . t n a w e garden w ue, popular q e b r a b a organize s... ops, game h s k r o w , meals

Let's grow some pum pkins!

I’d like to b e involved in growing m ore house plants to sell, growin g more food in the gar den, developing our compo st set up inc luding edu cating people abo ut it!

some It'd be great if g was further trainin rms of included (in te ills for improving sk one's career)...

THank you... to our Amazing Garden volunteers To our super staff team to our fantastic funders

to our dedicated partners