July ‘25
The month kicked off with a great wee garden festival in one of Inverclyde’s community gardens - The Drying Green (RIG Arts) - with music, arts and food. Great way of bringing the community together for a celebration of nature and harvest. Children picked peas and berries direct from the plants - many for the first time - and tried edible flowers like nasturtiums. Soup, salad and more were on offer to give people a taste of the garden. Fabulous time had by all!
July saw our last engagements with the nurseries for the summer - making up curry bags with the children from Bluebird, Larkfield and Wellpark (60 bags in all). We also spent time stripping back part of Wellpark’s garden of weeds and creating a new herb garden and woodchipped area around their bug hotel, with pots of flowers to brighten things up.
We continued our support at Craigend and Parklea, working with volunteers to maintain the gardens and to harvest produce. Some great success with salad leaves, chard, kale, onions, peas, beans and beetroot. Plenty to share! Volunteers at Parklea helped bag up hundreds of old plastic pots that we will be taking to Dobbies Garden Centre to be recycled.
Another session at Women’s Aid garden, where we were delighted to see that one of the residents had got involved with the garden. We were able to spend time weeding and replanting and harvesting lettuce that we had put in just a month ago.
It was also fantastic to be able to share lots of boxes of strawberries and other fruit that Belville had collected from M&S to Women’s Aid, Moving On and to the nurseries along with fruit and veg from our weekly Lidl collection.
Our regular visit to Moving On was met with really positive feedback from those we spoke to and lots of interest in community gardening - hopefully some will try joining in with their nearest garden in the future!
Our Moveable Feast became a family picnic this month at the new communtiy hub in Port Glasgow. Healthy sandwiches, wraps, veg sticks, fruit, carrot cake and beetroot brownies made up for families to share. The picnic was part of the Thrive Under Five initiative and was aimed at families with babies and toddlers, who had so much fun jumping, singing and dancing in a Zumbini session. The Oral Health team came along and gave away dental goodie bags to all those who attended. It was great event and feedback was very positive from the parents and grandparents who brought their little ones along.
Following a couple of weeks of holiday it was great to visit the wee garden at Kilmacolm Primary run by the Kilmacolm Eco Group, who gave us produce from the garden to share with the Pantry in Port Glasgow, who were very grateful for the contribution of lovely, fresh home grown veg to share with the community.
