March ‘25

Another busy month for ICFN!

Nursery school gardens: We visited 6 nursery schools in March, weeding and topping up beds with compost and planting spring flowers with the children. It was lovely to see some of the same wee faces again who remembered us from previous sessions and to meet new children at St. John’s in Port Glasgow. We loved talking to the children about growing flowers and vegetables and seeing their excitement of seeing and holding the worms! Some children took planted flowers home to share with their families and carers.

Craigend garden: Alice has been running a weekly gardening group at Craigend Resource centre on a Tuesday afternoon, where they have transformed the space out the back into a beautiful growing space. The have also tidied up the long bed to the right of the centre that was once overgrown with weeds into a well-kept bed full of new plants. Like all community garden sessions, there is a strong focus on the social aspect of the activity and the positive effect on mental and phyiscal health. Volunteers have said how beneficial it is to them…and particularly enjoy Alice’s line-dancing tuition, home made soup and cake at the end of each meet-up! If you are interested in joining in with the group, please get in touch!

SVQ Allotment course at Parklea: Monday afternoons have been busy at Parklea on the West College Scotland SVQ course in Allotment gardening led by Gary Rankin. Along with service users from Parklea and members of the community - some from other community gardens who have wanted to expand their knowledge - we have created a new allotment growing space from scratch. Along the way, we have learned about bed preparation, soil types, propagating, garden planning and crop rotation which has helped reinforce the knowledge we already have. If you are interested in future courses, please get in touch!

Permaculture course: Julie has completed an in-person online Permaculture course which she hopes to share the learning with colleagues and volunteers and apply to the nursery school garden growing.

Seed planting: Lots of seeds were sown with volunteers at Parklea on our weekly sessions there, where we have a dedicated ICFN growing space in one of the polytunnels. We are hugely thankful to Parklea for all their support for the network’s growing activities. These seedlings will be shared with the nursery schools and other community growing spaces across Inverclyde.

Potato Week preparation: 300 Potato kits were put together over the course of the month, filling bags and pots with compost and over 600 seed potatoes were chitted. Once again, we have Parklea to thank for the space to do this. Volunteers were a fantastic help in achieving this in time for the start of April.

Coffee grounds pick up: Weekly pick up of lots of coffee grounds from the Alchemist coffee shop in Greenock. This is shared with the community gardens for adding to compost - a rich source of nitrogen and helps speed up the decompostion process, while also preventing it from going into landfill where it adds to the build up of methane. We are very thankful to Alan for this valuable resource!

Woodchip deliveries: Thanks to local tree surgeons, we have an abundance of woodchip at Parklea and Belville garden that we shovel into bags and deliver to the nursery schools and community gardens. Alice has been using lots of woodchip to tidy up the long growing bed at Craigend - if you get a chance, go and look at the difference it has made! We use woodchip in raised beds, in compost and on paths - this will eventually decompose into beautiful rich compost or ‘black gold’ as it is known!

Lidl supermarket excess food pick up: We have been helping Belville with one of their many weekly food pick ups from local supermarkets in the push for a ‘zero waste’ community. Every Thursday we collect Lidl’s food ‘waste’ - lots of vegetables and fruit that are still perfectly good to use. Belville use some of the excess food in their weekly Friday ‘Soup n Blether’ community meal (get in touch with Bevlille to book a place!) and the rest is given out free to the local community. If you are interested in helping Belville with food collections please let us know!

Design, marketing and admin: behind all the activity outside, we have been busy organising the logistics of Potato week distribution, creating marketing flyers, social media and website updates, buying growing resources, planning our April Moveable Feast, providing evaluations, case studies and funding feedback. We also had our third column in the Greenock Telegraph about cooking healthy meals on a budget!

We are very thankful to all our amazing partners in Inverclyde and especially Cath Tearne our manager from HSPC who is so encouraging and supportive of all our activities.