Other Growing Groups and Courses

2024 Gardening course / workshops at Black Isle Brewery market garden, Allangrange

• Planning Your Veg Garden - 14th March 2024

Thursday 14 March 2024   10.00 - 2.00

Make the most of your growing space by learning how to lay out your production garden to best suit your needs.  Whether it’s planning successive crops on a blank canvas or integrating perennial edibles into an ornamental garden, we’ll take you through the design process to get you set up for the season ahead. 

Organic tea, coffee and cake provided. Please bring weatherproof clothing and a packed lunch if required. 

Meet in the lecture room (ask for directions at the Black Isle Brewery shop if unable to find) 

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• Seed Sowing & Compost Making - 28th March 2024
• Pricking Out, Potting On & Planting Out - 2nd May 2024
• Perfect Tomatoes, Indoor Growing & Companion Planting - 23rd May 2024
• Watering, Weeding, Pest Control - 6th June 2024
• Harvesting & Successional Sowing - 4th July 2024
• Second Season - 1st August 2024
• Harvest Festival - 24th October 2024
• Laying The Ground For Next Year - 14th November 2024
• Fruit Tree Pruning - 5th December 2024

Workshop list and summaries

Full details of each workshops and booking
https://www.blackislebrewery.com/shop/events-and-workshops

The cost is £45.00 for individual workshops or £400 for the whole series.

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March 2023

Knocknagael Community Growing Project

We are a community not-for-profit organisation established to take over the "Smiddy Field" - one of the fields at the Scottish Government-owned Knocknagael Farm on Essich Road in the south of Inverness - by an Asset Transfer Request. 

The aim of the Knocknagael Community Growing Project is to create, maintain and manage food growing activities, including allotments, for the benefit of the community.

Plans under consideration include a community garden, allotments, a community orchard, food growing areas, and outdoor walking paths.  We are in discussions with potential stakeholders including Education and Mental Wellbeing organisations.

With new housing going up all around Inverness, our aim is to create a Green Hub to get more people growing and enjoying local produce, while benefitting from a rural oasis in an increasingly urban landscape.  We recently submitted comments to the Highland Council's Inner Moray Firth Development Plan, which is currently under review.

​We have joined Community Land Scotland, the Community Woodlands Association, and been awarded a Stage 1 Grant by the Scottish Land Fund. 

Knocknagael website

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Highland Seedlings / Fearn Free Food Garden

Mairi MacPherson 

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'Pocket Orchards' in Wester Ross

Former TBI director John Wood and friends have been planting fruit trees in public spaces around the wester Ross villages since 2018.  

Pocket Orchards update 2022 - by John Wood

A ‘pocket orchard’ is a small group of community fruit trees which are accessible, where possible, to local residents with no, or minimum driving. The inspiration came from the community orchard in the garden of Cromarty Courthouse Museum, the wonderful gardens at Inverewe, and noticing some neglected apple trees in an overgrown corner of Poolewe.
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Full article

To find out more or get involved with the project, visit the group’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pocketorchards 

Or get in touch with them via email:  pocketorchards@gmail.com

Article link (HGFP)

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Elphin Green Bowl  online food market

The Green Bowl  is a group of crofters and non-crofters in Elphin and Knockan (NW Sutherland), led by Helen O'Keefe and Tessa Dorrian, working together to market, sell and distribute locally grown food to our community.  Seven producers sell a range of meat (beef, pork and mutton), eggs, honey, vegetables, fruit, herbs, bread and other baking.  Most sales are online, with weekly home deliveries to customers around Ullapool or pickups from Elphin.  In the summer, we also have a small farmshop, selling to tourists as well as residents.
 

Appletreeman

Andrew Lear,   Perthshire     https://plantsandapples.com/
 

Dunbar and District Local Good Food Alliance

MOO Food   Muir of Ord

(not up to date)

Background   October 2017