A conference and a garden in north Edinburgh

Yesterday was Earth Day (you can read my Substack post on the topic here). I attended an excellent half day gathering on biodiversity in Edinburgh, hosted by ECCAN (Edinburgh Communities Climate Action Network) held at the North Edinburgh Arts Centre, which is now housed in a newly built community hub building. There was a keynote speech from Simon Dures of Edinburgh Conservation Film Festival who shared an excellent film featuring entomologist and museum curator Ashleigh Whiffin outlining the rewilding project on the land around the National Museum of Scotland's collections centre in Granton.  It was great to meet like minded people and the lunch was excellent too. 

Part of the gathering included a workshop. I chose the workshop Reimagining Our Local Spaces for Nature & Community facilitated by Gill Hatcher of Scottish Wildlife Trust. The workshop started in the art centre's impressive garden, 

 

which has growing areas

 a play area and seating 

and a willow tunnel 

We then visited a small green area in the shopping centre that is still being developed to the front of the community hub building

Our task for the rest of the workshop was to think how this latter green space could be developed by the local community as an appealing, biodiverse space that would offer benefits to local people. We came up with a lot of ideas, which hopefully will be shared by the art centre, who are likely to really be working with the local community in the future to make this greenspace into an appealing, biodiverse mini-garden.

(I'll be expanding on my thoughts about the gathering in next week's post on my Crafty Green Poet Substack). 

After the conference I got a bus back into the centre of town and walked through the Meadows, to appreciate the cherry trees which are still in full bloom, though just starting to lose their petals.