At the Tullos Community Garden AGM on 27th February, Catrina Robb, Chair, shared a recap of the year’s achievements. CFINE is proud to have played a part in supporting the project. Here’s a summary of Catrina’s fantastic update:
“A good year for the garden, we started by taking part in RSPB Bird Watch in January, followed by two successful Easter family events, one in partnership with Family Learning.
Last year saw the formation of the Aberdeen Community Garden Network (ACGN) – a collaboration of community gardens across the city. From April to August, each garden hosted a weekend session, allowing groups to share volunteers and tackle larger projects together. At our session in May, they helped tidy up the garden just in time for our sixth birthday celebration. The celebration had a great turnout of local families, and a visit from the Critter Keeper. Pupils from Lochside Academy played a big role, helping with glitter tattoos and crafts.
Over the summer, we had help from Barnardos, whose young people looking to enter construction installed path edging. In July, a group from Ashtead Technology took on major tasks, including installing a fence around the mud kitchen, cutting back hedges and trees, painting planters and picnic tables, and building the Den.
The CFINE HOPE team has been a huge support, coming weekly to work on garden improvements. They cleared space behind the planters and installed new compost boxes.
Sadly, we lost one of our founding members, Sylvia, in June. To honour her memory, we transplanted her roses from her garden into Tullos Community Garden and held a memorial event, where the community came together to plant roses and install a plaque.
We held regular volunteering sessions, and were pleased to host Lochside Secondary 1 pupils, who learned how to grow food with Lucy from CFINE, myself, and Lochside’s teaching assistant, Taylor.
Throughout the year, I kept up weekly Geronimo sessions, and we ran two ‘Plant and Play’ family sessions in the garden. The CFINE songwriting course also took place, bringing groups together for songwriting inspired by visits to the garden. An outcome from this is a collaborative intergenerational project between Tullos Community Garden and Alec of ACE Voices.
A huge thank you to everyone who has supported us:
- Donna and Dorothy, our Community Development Officers, for being the biggest champions and helps for the garden.
- CFINE and the HOPE Team.
- Aberdeen Community Growing Network, Barnardos, Trojan Crates, Morrison Construction, and Hub North Scotland.
- Lesley-Anne, Friends of St Fitticks Park, for providing seedlings and buying us a pear tree.
- And finally, Aiden, our regular garden maintenance volunteer, who attends every session and is now in his second year with us.”