Better Outdoors

The Pavilion Garden is open daily Tuesday - Friday for the community to use and get involved. Mayfield and Easthouses Development Trust have been successful in a funding bid from The Mushroom Trust.

Between September and December 2020, we ran a number of activities in the garden, including wreath making, herbal workshops which enabled us to re-engage with the community in a safe space outdoors. Between January and March 2021 restrictions halted progress again but since April 2021 we have been able to reconnect as a community and gradually re-establish activities. As well as being used for gardening the space has enabled many groups such as The Brownies, Beavers and Stay and Play sessions as well as the Wheelbeing Hub which has been beneficial for wellbeing and regaining a sense of hope and purpose following the lockdown periods. Many other local groups now use the space in the garden and rooms within the Pavilion as restrictions have eased.

We have finished planting our orchard area and the apples, pears, cherries and quince are doing very well and already have fruit to harvest. As well as these we have planted around 150 trees from the Woodland Trust into pots, ready for mass planting in the autumn of 2021.

We have installed a water catchment system for watering our raised beds which were only built in April and are also wielding some fantastic crops of strawberries, corn, lettuce, pumpkins, squash, onions, beetroot and one of our volunteers has begin to use these to pickle and make jam which you can access at the Pavilion or Community Pantry.

To date we have barrowed 7 cubic metres of compost from the City of Edinburgh green waste recycling scheme.

Annual flowers have been grown from seed such as cornflowers, marigolds, cosmos and sweet peas and the 'Wow' border has been dug out and planted creating an amazing entrance along the front of the Pavilion building lining the new pathway, attracting more wildlife and increasing biodiversity in the garden.

The garden is now seeing many regular volunteers on a weekly basis and we always welcome new faces. Volunteer sessions happen on a Wednesday and Friday morning and a monthly Community Dig Day happens on the last Saturday of the month.

Midlothian Community Payback team regularly support us with grass cutting, construction of new beds and rubbish clearance.

The garden continues to evolve and has a really positive vibe and has much more potential for the future, volunteers and the community can really begin to see their efforts

are making a difference both in a practical sense but also in bringing an unused community asset back to life.

Our next steps involve a number of projects including - driving in up to 20 posts and installing a system with wire to grow more soft fruit such as raspberries and loganberries. We want to establish and train people to use a working compost system once we have a varied range of materials to compost. Vegetable planting will increase if we can sow more from seed and gain funding to purchase a keder house which would offer more protected growing space and rainy day working space, net the vegetable area with more raised beds space. Development of a children's play area, further privet hedge planting, planting of a multi-stemmed white birch for reflection and 'wish' messages on special occasions. To design and plant a large meditative crocus labyrinth as well as many other ideas on our wish list!