A productive year at Climate Friendly Gardens and a look forward

As I look back over the year I thought I would share with you some of the positive insights  from our programme of climate friendly garden workshops and events as a delivery partner with Climate Action Fife project. We worked with other community gardens across Fife to raise awareness of what we can do as individuals and communities to be more climate and nature aware in our gardening practices.

It all got off to a great start in April with an online seasonal growing workshop from Pauline and Jane from CLEAR Buckhaven & Methil. As lockdown eased we tentatively moved back into our  garden spaces to deliver sessions there. In May I was assisted by Karen from allnewyogalife for a Mindfulness in the Garden event at PLANT that introduced participants to Active Hope, working through climate grief towards becoming actively involved in local solutions.

In May Fiona from EATS Rosyth | About our community project and charity delivered an online workshop on growing in spaces which also highlighted reuse and recycled materials to help cut down on plastics. We worked with local storyteller Owen Pilgrim who delivered a great family friendly session that highlighted through story our overuse of resources and got us all chatting about what we can do to help reduce our impacts on the Earth. Other sessions involved a local Butterfly expert where children and young people came to the garden at PLANT to find out more about supporting pollinators in our garden spaces.

Carol at Greener Kirkcaldy held an open day at their community garden where the team delivered workshops around the theme of climate friendly gardening. Children and young people came along the garden during the Climate Festival to take part in the Climate poster competition. We had a great afternoon hearing about what local kids would do to help our planet.

In December we were joined by international permaculture teacher and agent of change Graham Bell who delivered a fascinating presentation online. I hope you agree that this was a very exciting and diverse range of activities to be involved in that helped raise awareness of the climate emergency and brought us closer as communities to work towards local solutions. Overall we worked with over 120 people face to face with another 200+ views of workshops and sessions online! Our final workshop will be online with Ali from Plant and myself looking at the year ahead and what we can do to become climate friendly gardeners.

Thank you to everyone who came along and supported these amazing sessions. Together we can build a better future.

For stories and podcasts on Climate Friendly Gardens see PLANT website.