Scotland

Our small but dedicated team in Scotland draw on many years of experience to work directly with groups across Scotland, enabling them to develop and improve their greenspace and nature-based activities.

Growing Back Stronger: the Community Growing Sector and a Healthier, Greener and Fairer Scotland

SF&G Scotland have launched a new report that examines the state of the sector a year into the COVID-19 pandemic.

The community growing sector’s experiences of COVID-19, as projects, communities and individuals has differed widely. Projects and partners across Scotland have come together and reached out over the last year to share and discuss our challenges and opportunities, to seek support and guidance. These insights are enlightening both as to the ‘state of the sector’ and the role it can play in recovery and renewal.

Our experiences may have differed, however, many of us share hope and a clear ambition to play a bigger part. Through over 80 voices, from across Scotland we share the reflections and lessons, the adaptions we have made through uncertainty and change, and the various stages of lockdown.

Click here to read the full report.

Re-opening Guidelines

For the latest updates on the safe use of community gardens please see the guidelines here. We appreciate restrictions and exemptions differ considerably across different local authorities. We will post updates and what they mean for your activities on our SF&G Scotland Facebook page and clarify certain aspects of the guidance in our monthly bulletin. Please make contact with the enquiry service by emailing scotland@farmgarden.org.uk for further clarification, support or simply to talk something through. It’s always good to hear from you.

Guidance

If you are in need of support and guidance around any issues related to Covid 19 then we recommend referring to this resource by The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations:

Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations

It contains information on emergency funding, supporting volunteers, moving your support online and HR, to postponing your AGM and much more.

For our full Coronavirus COVID - 19 support page click here

Green health benefits are increasingly recognised by our policy environment in Scotland

Our role is to support communities to adopt an asset-based approach that enables them to develop, thrive and sustain - evolving with the people they serve. We bring expertise from our members and partners using a peer to peer delivery approach that saves time and money - helping people to get it right . We work closely with the Scottish Government to help shape and enact policies and practice that can support and deliver sustainable change.

Our members are climate champions

They work with nature; building and nurturing healthier soils, gardening with wildlife and offering a broad range of educational opportunities to communities on growing and sharing local food. Increasing numbers function as hubs, sharing opportunities and services such as the redistribution of surplus food, clothes swaps and as facilities for health and wellbeing groups. Our support helps them to go further.

On this page

• Find out more about our work in Scotland and how we can help
• See below for a map view or list of Social Farms & Gardens members in Scotland, as well as local news, events and case studies. There are also lots of useful information resources available for social farmers, gardeners and growers on our Resources page.  
• If you are looking for members that offer commissioned health, social care or special education services (such as care farms), please follow this link.

How we can help

Advisory service

We offer a free enquiry service for anyone looking for support with their idea. The service provides valuable advice on key topics ranging from composting to volunteer engagement; as well as signposting to key contacts and simply being able to talk a practice issue through.  We welcome approaches not only from communities needing support, but also agencies looking to support them; such as local authorities, third sector interfaces or housing associations. 

News bulletin

Subscribe (link to scotland@farmgarden.org.uk) to our monthly bulletin with news, events, resources and funding.

Peer to peer exchange

Our members can access The Community Learning Exchange Virtual. A Scottish government programme that supports groups to explore and develop an idea directly with another group that has experience to share.

Training

We can offer tailored training for sites or groups.  Rather than teaching every individual to be a community gardener we seek to identify and coach leaders of activity to develop their skills and capacity in delivering practical and engaging garden related activities irrespective of age or ability. We are experts in delivering a broad range of topics from ‘Designing and running community consultation’, ‘Essentials to garden design’, ‘Designing a programme for year-round engagement’ and ‘Income generation’ to’ Effective composting in your setting.’

Food growing strategies

We work with a range of agencies involved in writing and consulting on their Food Growing Strategies - supporting people to identify and enact their approach and networking them with other partners with similar experience. We represent the members we serve through our advocacy and public affairs work combined with our role coordinating the Community Growing Forum Scotland. This means we are uniquely placed in leading on the key issues that we know are important to our communities - including health and wellbeing, and climate change.

If you’d like to know more about working collaboratively we’d love to hear from you, please contact: lou@farmgarden.org.uk