Our Community Garden
Kirkliston Community Garden is a local Community Garden that brings together community members of all ages. The KCG is made up of a group of community-focused members, who love celebrating and cultivating garden space, sustainable gardening practices, and creating an overall greater community spirit within Kirkliston. We’ve been working since 2019 to grow local and healthy green spaces for neighborhoods to enjoy and benefit from. We encourage you to join us and contribute towards making a positive difference.
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Our Philosophy - Permaculture
We try to use permaculture principles wherever we can in our garden. Permaculture is a way of growing things that works with nature. Imagine you're growing some cabbages and see that they're badly damaged by caterpillars. One option to save your crop would be applying pesticides, however this would harm lots of beneficial insects like pollinators too. Instead, permaculture takes the time to understand. Those caterpillars are cabbage white butterflies, which have a species of wasp that eat them specifically. To attract these wasps all we need to do is plant some nectar-giving flowers, which will be there for years to come. No more pest problems and some very happy pollinators!
In our raised beds we practice companion planting to enrich the soil and keep pests at bay. We also have a mini food forest in creation where we aim to create an edible ecosystem.
Raised Beds
In our raised beds we grow all kinds of plants together. We use leguminous crops, such as peas and beans, to fix nitrogen into the soil so we don't have to add any fertilizers. We have nectar-producing flowers in between our crops to attract pollinators. Sometimes these flowers can be beneficial too, belonging to herbs, medicinal plants or edible flowers. We try to grow as many perennial plants as often, so we don't have to replant every year which disturbs the soil.
Our Food Forest
Our food forest is a growing edible ecosystem. This technique uses edible plants to fill all of the roles within an ecosystem. Food forests require very little weeding since (if you've got your planting right) all the roles in that area are filled, so there won't be anywhere for weeds to grow!
We'll be planting up a canopy of fruit and nut trees with an under story of fruit bushes and strawberries. We may add a few edible climbers such as honeysuckle once the trees are more developed.