We’re actually half way through our second 10-week Green Gym in Kirkcaldy, and I’ve only just gotten round to doing a blog. Very lax of me so here goes…
We started at the end of February at the Cottage Family Centre in Templehall. The centre has got the lease on an area of wasteground next to the centre and are in the process of turning it into a garden space for use by the centre and local schools. Billy and his volunteers had already done an impressive amount of work since Dave and I had been on the site visit, but we found an overgrown area they’d left especially for us. We piled in down the end of the plot and started hacking away and removing the vegetation. We got all the brambles and little trees out, dug up the roots and started on clearing the rubble. The volunteers found enough bricks and rubble for an entire new wall! There were also the remains fo some railings buried deep so it took us a couple weeks to get the area ready for the real job.
Once all the vegetation, rubble and railings were cleared, we started digging out for 2 of the 4 raised beds. They’re being constructed from sleepers and some pretty hefty fenceposts. There’s 4 of them, and it’s intended that each of the 4 local primary schools should have one each for their pupils to grow whatever they want. After plenty of digging, we were able to start getting the first timbers in. The following week, we returned armed with a shiny new drill. It was peeing with rain so it wasn’t so shiny by the end of the session but we had got the 1st layers of each bed in. Week 5 saw us finishing off the first 2 raised beds and starting to dig out for the second 2 beds.
We took a wee break this week for a bit of willow weaving. They’ve got 2 domes linked by 15m of tunnel. We worked with Billy and his volunteers to get the ground prepared. Plenty more rubble came out. The volunteers expended a lot of energy digging the hard, rubbly, compacted ground. So you can imagine their delight when I announced that we needed to fill the holes straight back in again! Classic BTCV. It did make it a lot easier to get the willow poles in though so they did see the method in my madness when we started on that. Everyone had a go at weaving the rods in so we could all get the hang of it. Ok it ended up a little bit lopsided, but lesson learnt and I’m sure Billy’s crew will have done a stirling job on the dome and tunnel that we left them with. So it should be back to the raised beds next week.
