Over the last few weeks ive been working with the Dirty Weekenders Conservation society a student group within the Edinburgh University whom are keen beans for all things conservation with the Craigmillar Now centre to have a big clean out community day in our gardens.
As Ive mentioned before the 'big garden space' to the right of the dye garden had over the last 5 years become a dumping ground and neglected space wich was a really big concern of mine for it just seemed to be getting from worse to worse on a monthly basis!
with this there was the shipping container to contend with full of old rusted items and badly water damaged equipment of various sort that really needed to cleared out and emptied for all was in such a bad state. last week the skip had arrived from Travis Perkins much to our relief, so all was set for today to be the big clear out day!
By 11AM a team we had a team of 12 wonderful Dirt's assembled and ready for work by lunch at 1Am the skip much to the bafflement of everyone was almost entirely full!
Its bloomin marvellous how many hands make light work in the space of a few hours.
After a fabulous lunch of Pizza galore hosted by Rachel whom id have to say makes a excellent dinner lady, the shipping container was emptied and the garden space was soon cleared. Pipes, scaffolding, nets and old signage was to add a few some of the immense amount of rubbish we cleared from the garden space itself and without all that rubbish the garden space started to finally look like a space we could actually use.
By another hour we had reached the original ground level even finding a old staircase into the garden, where a rather grumpy mouse was least impressed abouts having his plastic pots taken away and certainly attempted a protest abouts it. By 3pm with the mouse rehomed and the ground level raked cleaned and tidied it was a job done, and my goodness what a transformation!. I have to say this has been one of the best transformations the outdoor spaces here has seen in recent years and now we can actually see the space we have so we can start to make plans with the team on what we want to do with it. theres been a lot of talk over the last month about making a potential community tree nursery for the community in the space with a few designs already being drawn up so its certainly a space to keep your eyes on.
After a bit of a pottering around within the garden the following week all is now set for 2022 and a new and exiting year in the Craigmillar Now garden.
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