Tuesday 9 January, 5 – 7pm
Granton Parish Church, Boswall Parkway
Tag: Granton Community Gardeners
Join Granton Community Gardeners for a Harvest Meal on Tuesday
Dear All,
It’s turning cold! Time to find a warm building, and cook lots of tasty food! You’re all invited to:
GRANTON COMMUNITY GARDENERS HARVEST MEAL 2017
TUESDAY, 21st November. Food served 5-7pm.
At Granton Parish Church (55 Boswall Parkway) -entrance on the corner of Wardieburn Street East.
FREE
ALL AGES WELCOME! (kids need to come with a responsible adult)
If you’d like to help out in any way, we need some people to help decorate, cook, serve food, or wash up. Please reply to this email or speak to Jayne or Tom if you’d like to volunteer!
You’re welcome to bring neighbours, friends and family.. (if you can RSVP it’s helpful to get an idea of numbers, but you can just show up!)
Big thank you to Granton Parish Church for letting us use their kitchen and hall!
This will be the first of a regular series of meals, every Tuesday (early evening) between now and 12th December. We have some funding from the Scottish Government to support this, so will be hosting as many meals as we can over the Winter.
We’re very glad to have a vegetarian chef working with us, Jayne, who also works as a cookery teacher, so she’ll be keeping us right and in charge of food! If anyone would like to help cook, it could be a good opportunity to share and learn some skills..
In other news:
Regular gardening drop ins are continuing, twice a week when the weather is ok. Meet 11am Tuesday or Saturday, at the garden on the corner of Boswall Parkway and Wardieburn Road. Yesterday we were planting garlic..
Bread club has been really popular, and is now happening roughly once a month. If you’d like to learn to bake or practice your skills, or would like to be contacted when we next have some of our own bread to sell, please get in touch! We’re about to mill our wheat from this year’s harvest, so we’ll have some more of our own flour to bake with.
We should hopefully have some new exciting updates to share fairly soon, watch this space!
Hope you’re all well,
Tom
Granton Community Gardeners
For more regular updates check: http://www.facebook.com/grantoncommunitygardeners.
Bereaved families to benefit from National Lottery investment
… and Lottery success for Granton Community Gardeners
A mother who lost her son in the most tragic of circumstances has today welcomed a National Lottery cash boost that will allow the Scottish Cot Death Trust to support many more bereaved parents to come together to share their experiences. Local project Granton Community Gardeners also received some welcome news this morning – the project is to receive over £78,000 to support and expand it’s programme of activities. Continue reading Bereaved families to benefit from National Lottery investment
Granton Primary School: from plot to plate!
Granton Primary School launched a new cooking club last week as part of the Food for Thought programme. Children made their own bread and butter and made their very own delicious minestrone soup! Continue reading Granton Primary School: from plot to plate!
Granton Community Gardeners to feature on STV appeal programme
GRANTON COMMUNITY GARDENERS: CHANGING LIVES!
STV Children’s Appeal – Changing Lives, Friday 17 March at 8pm on STV
In 2016, the STV Children’s Appeal raised an incredible £2,568,369 for Scotland’s children, thanks to the fundraising efforts of individuals, communities, businesses and celebrities across the country.
In a special programme presented by Andrea Brymer, STV presenters Sean Batty, David Farrell, Chris Harvey and Lucy Whyte visit some of the many projects that benefit from Appeal funding, including Granton Community Gardeners in Edinburgh, to find out how the money is having a real impact in communities across Scotland.
Viewers will also get a chance to catch up with some of the young people and families who featured in STV’s Appeal programming in 2016. STV Children’s Appeal – Changing Lives will air on Friday 17th March at 8pm.
The half hour programme shines a light on the fantastic work taking place across Scotland to help children and young people affected by poverty, focusing on four projects; Granton Community Gardeners in Edinburgh, Home-Start in Aberdeen, Bridging the Gap in Glasgow and One Parent Families Scotland in Falkirk.
Granton Community Gardeners was set up by a group of neighbours to cultivate a piece of wasteland in one of the poorest areas of the city. The £1,000 grant from the STV Children’s Appeal is now helping the project offer children’s gardening clubs as well as regular community meals to help combat isolation and provide healthy food at very little cost for local families living in poverty. STV News presenter Lucy Whyte joins local school children at the project as they learn how to grow and eat fresh and healthy food.
STV News presenter Chris Harvey visits charity Home-Start in Aberdeen, which is one of several local Home-Start charities in Scotland to benefit from over £81,000 from the STV Children’s Appeal, to find out how the funding is making a difference. The grant will help deliver Big Hopes Big Future, a project that works with children before they start school to ensure they have the necessary skills and behaviors in place to participate fully and benefit from their early years in education.
Live at Five’s David Farrell visits Bridging the Gap, an inspirational community project based in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, to discover how the community is joining together to help families in the local area. The project has received £2,000 from the STV Children’s Appeal to support its community services, which range from parenting support to weekly community meals to help reduce isolation among new residents, whether they are from other parts of Glasgow or other parts of the world.
STV’s weatherman and long term supporter of STV Children’s Appeal, Sean Batty pays a visit to Falkirk charity One Parent Families Scotland to learn more about the work of the Braes Family Centre, which has received £46,471 from the Appeal.
Based in the Upper Braes area of Falkirk, the family centre offers child care and outreach work in schools, including anger management training for teenagers who have been or are at risk of being excluded from school. The project is now hoping to launch a community hub offering a food scheme, a community garden, regular meals and a platform for local people to build relationships and break down barriers in the community.
Presenter Andrea Brymer said: “We are so incredibly lucky to have the support of the Scottish people who continually raise amazing amounts of money for the STV Children’s Appeal. Handing out the cheques and seeing the real difference the money can make is what makes every part of it worthwhile. We supported so many fantastic projects across Scotland in 2016 and we’re looking forward to sharing some of their stories in this programme.”
Elizabeth Partyka of the STV Children’s Appeal said: “We are extremely grateful to everyone that fundraised and donated to the STV Children’s Appeal in 2016. In this programme we highlight four of the many incredible projects that we’ve been able to support to show that every donation, big or small, helps make a difference in the lives of children and young people affected by poverty in Scotland.
“We are now in the midst of planning another fantastic line-up of fundraising events and programming for 2017 and with the continued support of communities across Scotland we hope to make this our best year yet.”
Since launching in 2011, the STV Children’s Appeal has raised over £13.7 million, with 722 big and small grants distributed to projects across all 32 local authority areas in Scotland, providing much needed support to over 62,000 children. The money raised is distributed to provide practical help like food and warm clothes; create opportunities for training and employability; and enable social and emotional support for those who need it most.
If you’re an individual or group that would like to help raise funds for children and young people living in poverty in Scotland with the STV Children’s Appeal, please get in touch with Natalie Wright at natalie.wright@stv.tv.
Granton Community Gardeners: update and invitations
It may be January and things can be looking a bit cold and grey, but lots has been happening in the community gardens and the group has been busy behind the scenes too … (writes TOM KIRBY)
Here are some updates, but first, some invitations!
Burns Night Community Ceilidh, Saturday 28th Jan. TIckets now on sale from Royston Wardieburn Community Centre (just £2!)
This will be the 4th year the ceilidh has run. It’s a joint event between ourselves, Living in Harmony (at Pilton Community Health Project), and Royston Wardieburn Community Centre. There’ll be haggis neeps and tatties, performances from local musicians, poetry recitals from pupils from Granton Primary, a piper, and live music from a ceilidh band, with plenty of space to dance in the sports hall!
It always sells out, so get your tickets asap. There are still some volunteer jobs available (which come with a free ticket), if you’d like to help, there’s a meeting at PCHP on Weds 25th at 10.30am. (ask for Adam)
Gardeners Cafe, Every Monday 5.30-7.30
You may remember this from a couple of years ago, but thanks to some support from the Scottish Government’s Fair Food Transformation Fund, this has now relaunched!
All welcome every Monday 5.30-7.30 at Royston Wardieburn Community Centre. The food is FREE but donations are welcome, and if you’re a regular you’re invited to join in with helping the cafe run, there are lots of volunteer roles and ways to get involved.
We’re seeing whether if we all do something to help, we can all enjoy a meal together, that is better (and much more sociable) than what we’d end up eating on our own in our separate flats!
Gardening drop ins, Every Tuesday and Saturday from 11am
Weather permitting! We meet at the community garden on the corner of Wardieburn Road and Boswall Parkway. We’re usually around for a couple of hours depending on weather and how much time/energy we’ve got that day! They’re a great way to meet new people, learn new skills, and work together on what are some very productive food gardens. All welcome, no prior gardening experience necessary! Fruit and veg is shared between the people who grow it! (or donated to the Gardeners Cafe).
Bonus Event: At the drop in on Tuesday 7th Feb, there will be a free breakfast provided by the Real Junk Food Project, who rescue and distribute food that would otherwise be wasted. They have a huge number of posh sausages left over from the Christmas Market on Princes Street, so are hosting free breakfasts around the city to use them up! (Weather permitting)
News updates:
We’ve just become a charity! Granton Community Gardeners is now a SCIO (Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation) number: SC047087
This will hopefully mean we’re better able to support gardening, and growing, cooking and sharing food, in the area for the longer term, and able to secure more support for our work.
Who’d like to learn about baking bread?
You may remember that last year we did a crop trial of some heritage Scottish wheat, as part of a project called ‘Soil to Slice’ run by Scotland the Bread.
We had a very successful harvest, with 42kg of grain (from about 100sqm of garden). We used some of this to sow a crop for 2017, and the rest is being milled into flour. A couple of us have had some training in baking and the magical bread that is sourdough. We’re thinking of starting a bread club to practice and learn, and eat!. Anyone like to join us?
Growing wheat on street corners seems to have caught lots of people’s imagination, and we were featured on the BBC, Edinburgh Evening News, and Daily Mail.
If you’d like to get more involved in anything we do, please either reply to this email, or come and chat to us at the garden sometime. Everything we’ve achieved has just been based on someone showing up with an idea, and other people agreeing to help make it happen. It’s amazing how many skills and brilliant ideas people have round here, let’s see what we can do with 2017!
Best Wishes,
Tom
(One of the people who helps organise things)
Get your tickets for Community Ceilidh
Royston Wardieburn Community Centre
Saturday 28 January 5 – 9pm
North Edinburgh projects to benefit from Fair Food Fund
Pilton Community Health Project, Granton Community Gardeners, Dr Bell’s Family Centre and Pilmeny Development Project are among twenty-one projects to benefit from a share of a £900,000 fund to tackle food poverty. Continue reading North Edinburgh projects to benefit from Fair Food Fund
Granton Community Orchard Garden: it’s time for trees!
Granton Community Orchard Garden is having some Tree Planting Days on Monday 7th through to & including Thursday 10 March. Fifty fruit and nut trees, (a couple going to the Community Hall) including apple, plum, cherry, pear, hazel and almond will be planted (writes Laura Munro). Continue reading Granton Community Orchard Garden: it’s time for trees!
Burns Night Ceilidh SOLD OUT
Organisers have announced that all tickets for Saturday’s community ceilidh at Royston Wardieburn Community Centre have now gone and the event is SOLD OUT!
