Resources

Hardwood cuttings are one of the easiest ways to take cuttings and can be done without the need for special tools or compost.

January is the best time of year to prune a vine while it is dormant and the sap won't be leaking.  We were lucky enough to welcome along Adrian Miles.  Adrian is a well known local gardening expert with over 25 years experience and he is a judge for 'Keep Scotland Beautiful'.  We were shown how to remove all the old growth and spindly stems and to cut back to the main trunk where there will be lots of dormant leaf buds.  These will grow out in the Spring to produce strong new stems.  The grapes will form on one year old wood so the vine has to be pruned every year.  

Dundee City Council Allotment Officer Kate Treharne supports new gardens with advice and resources like compost and raised beds. Contact her by email: kate.treharne@dundeecity.gov.uk 

  Check out here our catalogue of over 200 gardening tools and books you can borrow for just £1 a year. Nicky and the team can also share experience and give you one-to-one growing advice for your own space. Open every Thursday for collections and returns.   

We had a really busy and productive Workshop to look at what we can grow in the depths of Winter!  We tried out sprouting seeds and microgreens.

Our network members from Tayport PLANT community garden have a really well written and informative blog with low-carbon growing workshop videos with great tips. They are also part of a great initiative called Climate Friendly Gardens, a key part of Fife’s Climate Hub work.

During Art Night 2023, 24 of our gardens opened to the public and went on an interesting wheelbarrow collective trip. Kaska from SCCAN made it to 5 gardens where she asked Hollis, Gisela, Rowan, Catherine and Harold about why they do it, what motivates them and much more.

The RSPB run the big garden birdwatch every year and it has become one of the biggest wildlife surveys in the world.  Every year in January we are encouraged to watch birds in our garden or local green space and to record what we see.  The RSPB can then build up a very good picture of how our garden birds are faring.  

This is the perfect time to get a birdbox installed before the nesting season begins in earnest.  We had a brilliant afternoon in the Maxwell garden learning how to build 2 styles of bird box.   It was bright and chilly so after all the strenuous joinery work we had to retire back indoors for spicy soup and cups of tea! 

We have set up a group to learn and do more seed saving in our city.  If you would like to join us please email us: dundeeseedsavers@gmail.com

A lot of us had heard of it but never tried it! Tree Tapping is an ancient skill that has long been practiced by Northern nations. It is a way to extract the sap from a Birch Tree. The sap is renowned for it’s invigorating and rejuvenating effects on the body. Historically it was used to boost fertility and drunk as a tonic.

A Forest Garden works with nature in a system designed to mimic the structure and layers of a natural forest. A diverse range of plants help each other, provide food and habitat for wildlife as well as being useful to humans.

We have put together a useful box of things you might need if you are hosting an event.  It includes a 3m x 3m gazebo and a hot water urn plus a soup urn.   There are paper cups and a selection of stationery.  

We have a wonderful audio trail to guide you around some of the Community gardens.  Walking or cycling, it's the perfect way to see a bit more of the city or to visit some of the gardens.  https://izi.travel/en/ff0a-gardeners-of-change-intimate-portraits-of-dundee-s-community-growers/en

We all need to do our bit to reduce the amount of textiles that go to waste every year so we set up a workshop to design and make a gardening apron. What a brilliant afternoon we had, the creative juices were flowing! Everyone had so many cool ideas.

A wooden planter can be a great way to start growing in an area where there is no or little soil or perhaps a weed issue.  The planters will last a good few years if you line them with something to keep the soil off the wood.  Old compost bags are great for this or a landscape fabric.  Think about the size you can manage and the amount of compost or soil you will need to fill the planter.   The wood can be expensive but there are often recycled wood organisations that will help.  Dundee and Angus wood recycling may be able to help.  https://www.facebook.com/DundeeandAngusWoodRecycling/.  

It’s really easy to start off a few flowering plants now to give a super colourful Summer display. We looked at some of the seeds that will germinate quickly and produce flowers within a few weeks.

We are privileged to have some talented folk at the Maxwell Centre and wanted to share how easy it is to create your own messages.

Our friend Catherine Lawson came along to spend the afternoon at the Maxwell community garden and tell us all about bees and planting our growing spaces to help pollinators.  She even brought home made cakes!  

We have all heard of Superfoods but do we actually eat them?  Superfoods are packed full of vitamins and minerals that are good for our bodies.  Herbalist Chloe Bruce delivered a wonderful workshop on superfoods and we made a herb vinegar and a superfood salad dressing.  https://helpfulherbs.blogspot.com/

It's so simple to create a Fairy Garden of your own, you can even do an indoor one if you don't have an outdoor space.  We took a few simple, mainly foraged items , a bowl, a pot or container, shells, large and small pebbles, some ground cover Sedum, Viola odorata, Thyme, some flowers, sticks and bark from the garden.  The main ingredient was creativity, we had bucket loads of that!  The Fairy gardens had washing lines, fences, garden paths, ponds, toadstools, shelters and even flower borders.  Have a look at the pictures.  

We wanted to look at food growing on a large scale so where better to go than a visit to our very own Campy Growers.  We had a brilliant behind the scenes tour of the site.  They have 8 acres to work with on the site of the old council bedding plant nursery.  There was a huge amount of removal of old weed suppression fabric and using a Broad fork (see pic where Fatima is modelling the Fork) to break up the compaction prior to planting.  Huge poly tunnels were added and low raised beds.  No chemicals are used on the site and most of the work is done by volunteers.  A huge amount of veg is produced and there is a veg box scheme (sadly it is full up at the time of writing).  Plus there is a veg stall every Saturday in Camperdown park in season near the Play park from 11-1pm.   

We all like to save a bit of money!  There are loads of garden tips to help with the mountain of garden jobs, most of it involves recycling, especially plastic bottles!  Have a look at our tips https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H5Ri4_vXtI8VVxB7ILXebuMM5246DUFt/edit

On Friday 19th July, Sarah Crowe, a PhD candidate at the University of Dundee, held a ‘creative, place-based solutions to flooding’ workshop at the centre. Participants worked as a team to generate ideas to reduce the risk of flooding from the Dighty Burn which used blue and green features to bring lots of benefits for the community. Participants used Lego, building blocks, modelling clay, stickers and other craft items to ‘model’ their ideas and show how the different features integrated into the environment.