Our wee Community Garden

The Glencorse Community Garden goals are to grow food, build communities, improve health and wellbeing, increase awareness of wildlife habitat loss and climate change and to use this green space sustainably. The Glencorse Community Garden offers people the chance to meet others, learn about the environment, participate in therapeutic activities, work together, grow and eat local food, and most importantly enjoy time in a beautiful green space.

Let us know what you think of the garden

Share your thoughts on the Community Garden so that we can continue to improve it for our community: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/G3HH76M

Volunteer with us

We’re always looking for lovely new people to come and enjoy the garden space with us and green up our local community!

Garden Volunteer Form

Name

First Name

Last Name

Email

How would you like to help us?

Give us a wee bit of information about what you would like to do to help out in our wee community garden. Would you like to donate garden materials, volunteer with us or come to one of our garden clubs or events?

Plantaholics & Co

If you would like to donate plants or garden equipment, please tell us a bit more about them and their condition.

Accessibility

If there is anything that would make your visit easier and more enjoyable, please let us know here.

What we’ve been up to

In 2021, the Glencorse Community Garden faced an uncertain future. Due to Covid restrictions and a lack of garden volunteers, the garden was left unkempt and weeds quickly took over. To keep the garden going, Kate the centre coordinator reached out to local allotments in Penicuik and contacted people on their waiting lists to offer them space in the garden for a season. This fantastic initiative gave the garden a temporary reprieve and much needed gardeners.

A lifeline for our Community Garden

Although the lovely volunteers worked their socks off, having the community space separated into allotments for individual use led to parts of the garden being left untended. The condition of the raised beds worsened and action was needed to ensure the garden was preserved for the whole community.

In March 2022, we were awarded funding from the National Lottery’s Community Fund to bring the derelict garden back to life, and get people involved in their local community green space once again.

Cleaning up our act

We got stuck in with a community event to clear out the garden and get it ready for spring. Local families came with kids and grandparents and everyone got weeding, clearing, digging and waving tools around enthusiastically - the perfect day to kick off our new community space!

Working with other local charities for our community

Building on our partnership with The Orchard Project, local people came to the Glencorse Community Garden to learn how to prune fruit trees, soft fruit bushes and even how to graft fruit trees! Thanks to Chris at The Orchard Project for his time and expertise. Our small community orchard was doing so well after these sessions. Sadly, just before the apples were ripe, council employees got a bit over enthusiastic with the loppers, and we lost our apple harvest for 2022. We’re now trying to get help to mitigate the damage.

The Saturday Garden Club

We started our Saturday Garden Club to welcome local families into the changing garden space. Each session had several different activities to ensure there was something for everyone. Although our Saturday Garden Club has been temporarily suspended while we work on safely dismantling and re-purposing the old raised beds, we’ll be back soon, watch this space!

The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Garden Party

We came together as a community in 2022 to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and the future of the Glencorse Community Garden. The weather was on our side, beautiful home-made cakes were eaten in abundance, pots upon pots of tea were downed and wee ones enjoyed a game of croquet (yes, of course there were pink flamingos). Fantastic local volunteers came and helped with the set up, face-painting, planting the Jubilee tree, showing our visitors from the National Lottery around the garden, and community spirit really showed up when it came to tidying up and swilling out teapots

A busy gardening year in 2022

Throughout 2022, the Glencorse Community Garden has seen weeding extravaganzas, volunteering days, fruit-picking days, skill-sharing sessions, and more plant pot donations than you could count!

A fruitful growing season

Garden volunteers, workshop attendees and wee Glencorse Gardeners grew heaps of fruit and veg, available to take away for free for local residents and volunteers alike. We harvested over 5kg of redcurrants alone and they proved very popular with wee ones.

Tree planting & bountiful boundaries

We’ve been busy planting over 1,500 trees and bushes around the boundaries of the Glencorse Centre to replace much needed wildlife habitat lost to housing developers. The mix of native trees used has been chosen to provide foraging for local wildlife and varieties include hawthorn, hazel, downy birch, oak, willow, common alder, dog rose, beech, hornbeam and more!

We’ve teamed up with The Green Team, a fantastic charity who have been out in all weathers with volunteers and corporate groups planting hundreds of trees. Our thanks to the The Conservation Volunteers for the trees!

Building new raised beds for the Jubilee Garden

The cost of living crisis left us struggling with the cost of timber for the planned raised beds in the Jubilee Garden funded by the National Lottery, but thanks to help from Wellbeing Essentials, we were able to purchase enough timber for the raised beds and our fantastic volunteer Mark outdid himself. Wellbeing Essentials is a local social and business community which supports the need for greater financial education, knowledge and understanding for all. Have a peek at their Facebook page.

Penicuik and District Men’s Shed join us

This year 2023 began with the Penicuik and District Men’s Shed having to leave their home at the YMCA. Knowing how much good they do in the community, we reached out and asked them to join our quirky crew and we haven’t looked back! We can’t say it better than Gordon in his poem below. The Men’s Shed have donated their time and labour to help out in the garden, building fabulous Bug Hotels out of scrap wood for the Community Garden and our Plant Sale Fundraiser on 20th May 2023.

Little Buds Gardening Club

This March, we started a new gardening club for youngsters age 2 and more in partnership with the wonderful Brae Café. So far we have led 3 sessions where we have planted nasturtiums, potted up daffodils and made willow wreaths and plaits out of willow prunings from the community garden and we’ve planted sunflower seeds. Send us your photos as they grow!

Spring Clean Scotland to Keep Scotland Beautiful

This spring, we’ve teamed up with local residents from Auchendinny, Bilston, Roslin and Penicuik to take on the Spring Clean challenge from 21st March-21st April to help clean up Scotland. Research by Keep Scotland Beautiful revealed that 88% of Scots agree that litter is a problem across Scotland. And 70% are concerned about litter in their area. Getting involved with litter picks is a great way to improve our local neighbourhood and meet like-minded people whilst enjoying the outdoors. Find local events near you, and if there aren’t any, why not organise and advertise your own?

Ours trees are growing up, and so are the mini meadows!

Thank you to The Conservation Volunteers for the hundreds of trees which we've planted! Huge thanks also to The Green Team who have come out in all weathers and planted these native trees around the Centre grounds.

We've created large wild meadows around the small copses of trees that are now dotted around the Centre grounds. These mini meadows allow native grasses, wildflowers and wildlife to thrive. The next time you're at the Glencorse Centre, why not take a walk around the grounds and see what you can spot?