Visit to LambHill Stables

A visit to Lambhill Stables this morning, where a small band of ‘mini gardeners’ were on hand to help talk up the role which local food production has in Glasgow. The project is a really interesting one, and they will find out soon whether they can get their hands on the funding to develop the old building into a community facility.

We were joined by my colleague Kieran Wild, the local Green Party city councillor, Patricia Ferguson, the constituency MSP (pictured), and a host of people from the local community and other organisations.

The idea of bringing unused land in our towns and cities into productive use has been around for a long time of course, and with long waiting lists for allotments in some areas it’s something we could be doing so much more of. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has been promoting the issue recently, both on his TV series and on the Landshare website. While the Scottish Government haven’t yet taken up the idea I’m hopeful that they can be persuaded, as Glasgow City Council have been – they accepted Green proposals in last year’s budget to get some work going along these lines, and I was delighted to find myself getting the bus back to the city centre today with the guy whose job it is to scout out possible locations for a big market garden in Glasgow.

Meanwhile community groups like the people at Lambhill and others like our friends at Toryglen Community Gardening Club, are cracking on with this work in their local areas, and more power to them. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for the Lambhill funding bid.