Granton Community Gardeners features on a new episode of the Carbon Copy Podcast
A community-led food growing charity, based on Wardieburn Road in North Edinburgh, has been featured on the latest podcast episode from climate charity Carbon Copy.
Granton Community Gardeners, which was founded by a group of neighbours in 2010, is now a flourishing and vital community organisation, with weekly gardening and cooking sessions, a chicken co-op, cycle repair pop-ups and a beautiful permanent garden space used by diverse groups from around the area.
Speaking to podcast host Isabelle Sparrow, Mary, one of the co-founders of the charity, explained why a project like this is so important: “We have over fifteen different nationalities that come here.
[People come from] Germany, France, Kenya, India, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria…I wish each community could have something like this. When you come here, you eat fresh food, you engage yourself, your mind is relaxed, your wellbeing [improves]. You are not bored. When you come here, sometimes you work, even if you don’t work, you come and sit and eat!”
Granton Community Gardeners has recently been recognised for its important work by being selected as part of the Nature Neighbourhoods programme.
Led by the RSPB, WWF-UK and National Trust and funded by National Lottery Communities Fund and the Co-op, Nature Neighbourhoods is a UK-wide programme supporting projects in towns and cities that are helping to connect people with nature and wildlife.
Speaking on the podcast, Rory Crawford who is managing the programme for the National Trust said: “Community organisations are doing brilliant work at the community level in many of our towns and cities, and nature organisations are doing some excellent work at the national level, and you know in some places doing some really great work in towns and cities too.
“But there can often be a disconnect between those two parts of the sector. One bit which is perhaps higher capacity and works on big national policy issues, and another bit which is very much focused on the local: what matters to an individual place.
“We need to be able to work more meaningfully in towns and cities. We need more nature in towns and cities. We just need to have it. That’s where people will get that first spark if we’re going to have any hope of solving the nature crisis … it’s all about hearing what a community needs and wants from nature in their place.
“And that’s our starting point for it. So that’s why we’re working with anchor organisations in Nature Neighbourhoods like Granton Community Gardeners.”
To learn more about Granton Community Gardeners and how the Nature Neighbourhoods programme is supporting this and other local projects around the UK, listen to All Nature: Nourishing Connections, on the Carbon Copy website or wherever you get your podcasts.