A definite Garden theme filled this week for us in Edinburgh. On Tuesday we shot off to help dismantle BTCV’s entry in the Gardening Scotland competition. This year Heath’s Alice in Wonderland theme won a silver award and narrowly missed out on a silver gild. By the time we got there Wonderland was looking more like a bombsite and certainly about an an hour in to our day it was looking worse. I’ve said it before on this blog, if you tell people to completely dismantle something things like tools just get in the way. The entire display had been torn down in about two hours and was left in neat piles at the side of the road ready to be loaded into Heaths van.
Because of our speedy work and a lack of transport we had an early lunch, playing frisbee in howling wind meaning it was mainly a case of throwing once and then running off to retrieve it as it got caught in the gale. Heath arrived shortly after lunch and so we set about loading up his van with everything including a 12 foot birch tree which required pretty much everyone in order to shift it. Because we were feeling kind and generous towards Heath we also followed him to Jupiter plant nursery to help unload (his van having some suspiciously bulging tyres on account of the weight in the back). The plan is that most of the material can be recycled in some way around Jupiter.
On Wednesday we visited Heatherfield Care Home in Bathgate to do work on their residents garden. This involved laying down large quantitities of bark chip and pebbles into various beds around the site. as well as removing all the weeds that had sprung up between gaps in the flagstones and then packing sand into the cracks to prevent them reappearing.
There was also a Gazebo that needed painting as well as general garden maintainance, so plenty for us to be getting on with. Lunch was spent testing our general knowledge with Willies huge pub quiz book and watching Dave and Sarah play mini Jenga (shortest game ever due to uneven surfaces). The afternoon was spent much in the same way was the morning, with only slight concern as we realised that the level of pebbles in the ton bags was running dangerously low, however by the time we left the garden was looking great. As we started to pack up the first few drops of rain fell which quickly became a downpour that left us scrambling for the shelter of the van with only poor Phil, sorting out the wheelbarrows, on the top of the van. 5 minutes later he too got in looking less than happy, who’d be a VO eh?
Thursday took us out to Gorebridge and a new community garden scheme which has been set up. We got slightly lost on the way there which accounts for us arriving a whole hour after we left Waverley. However with the help of directions from the local postman we made it and set to work. Our task for the day was digging out beds, plots and paths and then filling them with various composts and woodchips. Unfortunately there had been a underestimation of the amount of woodchips that would be needed for the path work and we quickly used up the 4 tons available and needed to order 12 extra tons for delivery.
We dug out several bedding areas which will be used by the local school children in their lessons and used the leftover turf to create a mound that will eventually be planted with wildflowers. Overall it was a tough physical day with all the digging as well as barrowing all the compost and woodchips which had been delivered a fair distance from the garden itself, as always though everybody got stuck in and we left the site in great shape for their community open day in a couple of weeks.
Doesn’t time fly, thats another week gone!
To view photos of past and present projects and our volunteers in action please click here