Other Growing Groups and Courses

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

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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July 2022

Old Allangrange and Black Isle Brewery Market Garden

Allangrange garden design  office@blackislebeegardendesign.com

Also at Allangrange is the Black Isle Brewery's market garden, which supplies vegetables to the Brewery's bars in Inverness and Fort William  and IV10 in Fortrose, and has been transformed to a more sustainable and regenerative model by redesigning the main garden using agroecological design and growing principles.

https://www.blackislebrewery.com/

Brewery Head Gardener Alex Davies writes about the market garden

We grow our organic vegetables and fruit using agroecological, no-dig and permaculture methods to increase biodiversity and support local flora and fauna.  A good example of this is how we use the spent grain from the brewery – as well as feeding it to our Hebridean sheep, we combine it with green waste from the garden and wood chippings from local tree surgeons to produce the compost in which we grow all our veg - this ‘closed loop’ system acts in a regenerative way, allowing us to give back more than we take from the land.

Read more

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Highland Seedlings / Fearn Free Food Garden

Mairi MacPherson 

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Highland Wholefoods February newsletter 

2023 is already a month old, and the light is starting to creep back into the sky.  Here at Highland Wholefoods we are getting ready for another busy year.

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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

The Scottish Food Coalition

Stirling Online Market

This was originally set up as Stirling Food Hub in 2016 by Forth Environment Link, who in January 2020 transferred the market to The Kitchen at 44, who now run it under the auspices of the national NeighbourFood network.
 

Transition Town Forres'  Community Garden

TTF have a page on their main website about their Community Garden, and the garden also has its own website, mainly intended for garden members and users.
 

The Seed Co-operative