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Horizon Housing Association give and gain day
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Summary
July 10 was Give and Gain Day, when employee volunteers from 220 companies across the UK spent the day helping out in local communities. One of those organisations was Horizon Housing Association, which joined the Link Group at the end of last year. Horizon’s in-house maintenance team spent the day helping the Cyrenians at Edinburgh’s Community Gardens. David Lacey of Cyrenians, who’s in charge of the garden project, talks about it.
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Transcript
Jane Smernicki:
This is a podcast from Link Group on 10th July 2010. To read a transcript of this podcast, or to hear more Link podcasts, visit www.linkhousing.org.uk.
Jane Smernicki:
Today is Give and Gain Day, when employee volunteers from 220 companies across the UK spend their day helping out in local communities. One of those organisations is Horizon Housing Association, which joined the Link Group at the end of last year. Horizon’s in-house maintenance team spent the day helping the Cyrenians at Edinburgh’s Community Gardens. I spoke to the Cyrenians’ David Lacey, who’s in charge of the garden project. He told me a bit more about it. So, David, can you tell me what your position is with the Cyrenians?
David Lacey:
I work for the Cyrenians involved with the Good Food Programme, which is dealing with food which is collected and redistributed to homeless and disadvantaged people in Edinburgh. But currently I’m seconded here, to the community garden at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, to give Sean Jacques, who’s been here since November when we first took over this piece of ground, a bit of a hand. I’ve done some gardening in the past and I’m using that bit of knowledge to help Sean get things moving, up here at the community garden.
Jane Smernicki:
OK. Can you tell me a bit about the community garden? What is it, and what’s its purpose?
David Lacey:
It’s a joint project between the Lothian health board and the Cyrenians. Health board chairman Charles Winstanley is very keen that the land surrounding all the hospital premises in Edinburgh – but this one is the pilot, at the Royal Edinburgh – is used for the community, that people can access the grounds, which are lying in some cases totally unused for many years. And he sees this as a therapeutic way of helping the community to look after their own health and therefore not become patients in any of the hospitals. So the ground is being released in parcels, not only here at the Royal Edinburgh but plans are that it’ll be in other estates around the city, and allowing the community to access it and grow and plant and just enjoy making use of the land.
Jane Smernicki:
Yeah. So, I mean, gardening and planting and growing can be very therapeutic, can’t it?
David Lacey:
Absolutely, yeah, very therapeutic. We find that people enjoy being out and about. It’s a lovely environment, not very sunny today, but it’s a woodland area which has been left derelict for about 20 years now. When we first took it over, Cyrenians in partnership with Lothian health board, it had had all the green waste from this particular estate dumped on it for 15, 20 years. So there was a huge job to clear the land in the first place. And now, as you look round, you can see that there’s beds in cultivation and people working away hard on the ground at the moment.
Jane Smernicki:
What sort of things do you grow here?
David Lacey:
Basically we’ve got two areas. This present area here is more of a gardening area. You can see the salad crops, broad beans, beetroot, courgettes, all sorts of things in the smaller sort of scale of gardening. And then beyond that privet hedge and that beech tree there’s a big field which has been turned into production for potatoes and onions, and that’s much bigger than this area here.
Jane Smernicki:
So how is the produce that’s grown here distributed, then?
David Lacey:
It’s given to those who are involved. We’ve got a number of local amenity groups and residential groups. Shandon Food Group. Collum Seal, which is part of the Steiner group. Steiner School, who are quite close. So there’s a number of groups and individuals, and they’re all growing their own food. And once it’s ready for harvesting they’re using it, we’re giving it, they’re taking it away and using it. People are harvesting stuff already - all the lettuce and salad crops that are ready are being used already.
Jane Smernicki:
So I can hear lots of digging and hoeing and everything. Who is it that’s here today, working on the garden?
David Lacey:
We’ve got one corporate group from a well-known bank. They’ve come along today on Give & Gain Day, which is organised by Scottish Business in the Community. And then we’ve got people from Horizon housing group – some of their ground maintenance staff have come along to give us a hand. And they’ve brought huge expertise, wonderful tools, and are absolutely… They were here at half past eight and have been working solidly ever since. And they’ve already had a huge impact and created, I think, about four boxed beds already.
Jane Smernicki:
Fantastic. What is the plan for today, then? Have you got particular jobs set up for them to do?
David Lacey:
Yep. Both groups… Well, the Horizon group are… at the moment they’ve got two guys strimming, they’ve got a woodland path, and the group from the corporate people are involved in creating log edges, laying fabric and wood chip onto the woodland path. But the two guys from Horizon were strimming about a metre out from the existing path to clear it and allow that to be done by the second group. And the other Horizon team, there’s four of them, they’ve been making, creating the boxed beds. Levelling the ground, weeding it, and putting it together – staking them into the ground and making it all ready, levelling. You can see. There’s one, two, three, and Tam down there is sawing and cutting wood and assembling the beds.
Jane Smernicki:
So it sounds like they’re making a pretty good contribution.
David Lacey:
They are making a fantastic contribution. Since half past eight this morning they’ve done more work than some of the groups that have been here all day. So they’ve done a fantastic job. But they’re experts, that’s the thing. These guys know what they’re doing. And it’s great to have the corporate people here, but to some extent a lot of them are not gardeners. But they are willing and they help, and you can see that guy over there’s just got a huge stone out, which I’m fantastically pleased with. And because we’ve got Beechgrove Garden coming to film here in about five weeks’ time, beginning second week in August, we’ve got a number of projects identified, including the ones that we’re working on today. And the other big thing we’re doing today is putting rabbit-proof fencing round, you can see some of the guys are working on that. But when Beechgrove have identified about ten projects that we want to do, and those are being achieved partly today and in the next few weeks before the programme’s filmed.
Jane Smernicki:
That’s great. What sort of thing do they want to do, then?
David Lacey:
Well, we’ll have to create a herb garden and a bog garden. We’re going to make the woodland path that I’ve talked about. We’re going to have fruit trees planted along the south-facing wall which abuts the north end of the ground there. We’re gonna do willow planting, a lavender walk, a living willow arch. So there’s loads of things happening, and it’s all just fantastic to see so many people from the community. And the fact that we’ve got corporate support here today and Horizon doing this work, when people come back here they’re so encouraged when they see another bit of ground has been taken from thistles and weeds and docks, beds have been created, the ground has been dug over, compost has been added into it, and they can come and plant and work it, it’s just fantastic. They’re so encouraged by that. And this day will move this project forward tremendously.
Jane Smernicki:
Oh, fantastic. That’s really good, it sounds like a really brilliant project. Is there anything else that you would like to add that I maybe haven’t asked you about?
David Lacey:
What we’re needing is tools. We’re needing some tools, and if anyone out there has an old spade or a fork, digging spades and forks, hand trowels or hand forks, hoes, rakes, anything like that that they feel they’re no longer using because they’ve been lying in the shed for about five years and they’re getting a bit rusty, bring them along to us. Let us… Give us a ring, get in touch, and we would love to use them, because we’re always looking for tools.