Plans for Fintry Community Garden

This week's blog is written by one of our members and volunteers, Alistair, who is also as you will see in the below drawing by Alistair, excellent with his artistic skills.

As we seem to be in limbo, waiting for this plan to get-go from the council, (and now with the pandemic) I thought we had better start the discussion to confirm the plans we have for the site, so far I have taken the drawings from the school kids of Fintry Primary School and all the information about what the community wanted, and put these in a plan that we were all happy with. It has been several months since we handed in the plan and since then we have been offered 400 tree saplings, 20 apple trees, and 40 soft fruit bushes, which is absolutely great but we have not known where to stick them! So I’m proposing we firm up our idea’s so that if we are offered more stuff we know where to put it! Also to make sure we are happy with the plan.

Community building: in the original drawings we had the community building placed at the north end of the site, smack bang in the middle. Here it would look over the entire site and being close enough to library to access electric and water supply. Here are some examples of community garden buildings in the area from Foxglove Community Garden, Hope Community Garden and Ninewells Community Garden:

Toilets: further conversations are needed by the group as of the need for a toilet, this would have outside access so that people were not dragging mud into the building. This, of course, would probably best to have male and female toilets plus disabled access. Currently, toilet access (pre convid19 restrictions) allowed members of the public to use the toilets either in the Fintry Library or Finmil Community Centre.

Secure storage: the dreaded ugly storage container !!! I thought it could be incorporated into the main building and disguised with wooden panelling but still have the outside access! It will most likely have flammable materials, petrol, gas etc so might need to be sited away from the main building? We looked at a mental shipping container due to it being fireproof, would not rot (like wood would) and would be more challenging to break into. Shipping containers are not the best things to look at and certainly not the first thing you think off when you think about a community garden, but look at these three from around the world:

and this one, a little closer to home, over at Tayview Community Garden, Dundee:

Entrances: there is the current entrance from the south-west, off of Finavon Terrace and a new proposed entrance in the north-west corner again from Finavon Terrace. There is also a proposed entrance from down the side of the library and we are even talking about needing an entrance from the Finmill Centre, this is a bit more complicated and also possibly expensive, I think it is important to connect to all the surrounding community buildings, I don’t see us as a separate entity. There will need to be some negotiation with the Finmill Centre regarding security but if the usage of the garage is to become permanent, we would definitely need to have an independent 7 days a week access. This might resolve the issue of an unsightly storage container?

Growing spaces: I have drawn all the raised beds, including the high wheelchair accessible beds, in the outer central ring I have drawn in some pods, these as circular areas for development, they could have decorative planting or food growing. If all the areas marked on the plan for growing including the apple trees and the polytunnel, this would give us 650 m² of growing which would mean 25% of the land would be used for growing if you took away a 3rd of the land because of the large trees, where you couldn’t grow anything, that would leave us here 33% of the land used for growing food.

Polytunnel: where I propose to re-site the polytunnel, I thought as the polytunnel would be transparent it would not have a great impact on people’s view of the garden, and might even be asked ethnically pleasing if we get the community to decorate it? The one drawn on the plan is 3 x 8 metres which are quite big but we could expand in the future anyway.

A yard?: I was proposing we have a storage yard at the back of the community building, but I now realise access to this from large deliveries done by tractor and trailer wouldn’t be practical, so I have placed a proposed yard (surrounded by a picket fence of some sort) at the South-East end of the area, where nothing much grows anyway and this is where the tractors come through anyway!

Each of these subjects needs to be discussed by us as a group, with expert input and advice and of course most importantly, community views and suggestions, so I thought this lockdown would give us the perfect opportunity to firm up our ideas. Once we have our lawnmower as well, I could market the pathways and cut these, giving us a rough idea of what the site might look like! I would appreciate any comments you have via this blog post.