We are very excited to announce that the Scottish Land Fund has awarded us a grant to cover 90% of the (£45,000) purchase price for Belhaven Community Garden!
They will also be contributing towards other costs including legal fees, some urgent repairs and the future employment of a short-term development worker, totalling a further £24,594
This grant is obviously hugely helpful but in order to cover the £4,500 balance of the purchase price and to implement the first phase of our initial development plans for the garden, we still need to raise a further sum of around £40,000 over the next few months. This is for essential things like a mains water supply, tool storage and a compost toilet.
We will therefore be launching a crowd-funding campaign early in the New Year. Many people have already been asking about this and we’re very grateful for this enthusiasm and for any future support that you may be able to provide towards developing the garden. Please watch this space for further information.
In the meantime, we are very busy finalising details of the land purchase with NHS Lothian, starting the legal process to transfer ownership, planning the future development of the garden and so on.
Many thanks to everyone who came along to the garden last Saturday for our informal celebration event. We gained some very valuable ideas and input and offers of practical assistance which are much appreciated. There will be plenty more opportunities for local people and groups to input ideas over the coming months -we are very keen to crowdsource ideas to ensure that the garden develops into a resource for the whole community.
Our regular volunteer sessions will be continuing through the winter months, 2-4pm on Saturday afternoons (with a break over Christmas). Anyone is welcome to come and join in. For any further information please get in touch with Naomi: bcg@sustainingdunbar.org