Gardening and Buddying

Carey Douglas, our fabulous Garden Training Coordinator, has been running three of our projects in Dunbar since May 2022.

Buddying at the Beehive Garden

Next to Dunbar’s nursery, the Beehive Garden has been taking shape since 2021 in collaboration with nursery staff and initial funding from Dunbar and East Linton Area Partnership. It took shape under the creative leadership of Caroline Bryden for the first year, and has gone on in leaps and bounds since Carey Douglas took it on a year later. With a polytunnel, tool shed, reading circle, a few raised beds, a wildflower mound, fruit trees and a soft fruit patch in place, the nursery children enjoyed their first year of tomatoes, flowers, and an assortment of veg in summer 2023.

The garden also has an important role to play for Dunbar Grammar School students on the Child Development Course. Each week, a group from the course designs outdoor activities and they buddy up with the nursery children to get hands on experience with them. This brings their course to life and gives the students valuable time in the outdoors building relationships with the nursery children.

The Beehive Garden has received lots of local support. A big note of thanks goes to volunteers from Belhaven Community Garden and the Dunbar Shed who put up the polytunnel and made planters, the Dunbar Garden Centre for donations of fruit trees, compost, planters and seeds. To AGThomson & Sons who donated time and hardcore to build the path to the polytunnel and our wildflower mound. And to MADE Storage for putting up the shed free of charge.

Monthly volunteer sessions run on the last Saturday of the month 10-12 to keep the garden cared for.

New volunteers – young and old – are very welcome, no experience necessary! For more information contact: carey@sustainingdunbar.org

The Green Team

meets once a week to get out into the Belhaven Community Garden (BCG) with their carers to grow, paint, create and learn new things about nature and food. Recently, they have also been replanting and painting the boat in the hospital’s Blossom Garden and now they have taken on a small plot to grow veg at the BCG.

Buddying at Belhaven Hospital

Update! Due to the closure of the hospital, this project is now running at Dunbar Day Centre.

Brightening up the days for residents of Blossom House at Belhaven Hospital is what the Belhaven Hospital Buddies Project is all about. This is an intergenerational project to connect our teenagers with the older generation and bring them all a bit closer together. Our teenage volunteers are working towards Saltire Awards with their weekly sessions with the residents. Some recent highlights include celebrating the NHS’s 75 anniversary with an afternoon tea, Christmas themed activities and entertainment and a Burns supper with poems and a piper.

Thanks goes to the generous and supportive staff at the hospital who helped get this project off the ground. The volunteers are looking forward to warmer weather when they can take residents out into the Blossom Garden.

To read the latest news from Carey about her work, follow her updates here:

These projects are made possible by generous funding from:

The Amos Trust (2022-2025); The Robertson Trust (2022-2025); Dunbar and East Linton Area Partnership (2021 & 2022); Belhaven Brewery sponsorship (2021-2024); The Mushroom Trust (2021)