The Story of a Farm Garden Closing

Dear Edinburgh City Council,

This is the story of my connection to Gorgie City Farm. I’d like to start it by clarifying this is my perspective and there were plenty of people that came before me and were experiencing the farm alongside me in their own ways and those are equally as valuable. The farm holds many stories and many experiences — this is mine.

I am horticulturalist and community gardener, I got involved with the farm just before COVID lockdown as a volunteer and the land quickly grew dear to me. Once that initial connection was established, there was no chance of leaving. I stayed involved over the years; even through mismanagement and without financial support, the garden volunteers made it our little safe haven in Gorgie-Dalry.

pictures from between 2020-2022

The area truly has no other greenspace like it: biodiverse, interactive, a space to grow food and talk to one another, a place to run gardening workshops and learn about organic growing. It really brought people together.

A garden is never just a garden - especially one born out of community.

See you have to understand all odds were against us. There was never any money, the place is in need of repairs and there is always more to do than there is time for.

I suppose we could’ve just left it, considered it not worth the efforts and stress, but once you come to love Gorgie Farm, it becomes a part of you.

So what happened?

We’ll the farm closed (due to some mismanagement) all staff were all made redundant for Christmas 2022. Although that is not the story I want to focus on, I did make a little film at the time when the farm shut its doors to the public.

Hopefully that gives you an idea of the space and some of us who were involved in tending to the place.

Fast forward to March 2023: EVOC (Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations' Council) were commissioned to look at options for a community led and collaborative future for the former farm. Sound good enough, no? You can read more about this here.

The garden volunteers obviously missed the place a lot and we continued meeting now and then to catch up. We decided to get in touch with EVOC and were lucky enough to be let back on site as a volunteer group in the summer of 2023.

As expected, after months of being abandoned, the gardens were drastically overgrown, but we came together and with help, were able to get it back to a tidier state.

Below are some pictures from that time:

~꩜ '❀

So we were back on site— wonderful!

I was even given a year contract with EVOC to lead gardening sessions. For a while I really did feel supported and felt we were being considered in decision making more than ever before!

See, it’s very difficult to return to a place you love so dearly. One that has been and can be taken away from you without much explanation. Of course it took a while to convince people to come back to volunteer and some people never did return.

Volunteer groups poured lots of physical work into the garden over winter and spring: Re-laying paths, clearing the poly tunnel, weeding the cobbles, tidying, seed sowing, mulching etc. There was always more to do than we could manage, but we worked hard and for a while things seemed hopeful and positive. We even got some funding from the RSPB, who also donated many bulbs and bird feeders to the project.

To us, this is our garden,

we want to share it and tend to it,

drink cups of tea and coffee and hot chocolate

between the crops and flowers.

I wish it could just be that, a place of refuge

in between all the pressures and stresses of life

the injustices and grief

that’s all a garden should and could be no?

A place to share space with plants and others

when we leave our damp and cold Edinburgh flats

A place to pick fresh food, herbs and flowers,

A place the kids learn to grow things,

as they grow up.

These acts of weeding, picking, harvesting

perhaps seem simple,

but hold so much meaning.

After a fire in the stables, started by two (I’m guessing rather bored) teenage boys, the volunteer sessions came to a sudden halt in August.

Edinburgh City Council is now back in charge of the site and we are not allowed to return for the foreseeable future in the name of health and safety.

[Just a note on that: the garden is not near the stables, fencing has been put up and it isn’t any more dangerous than other community garden projects. It would have been perfectly reasonable to keep coming in and looking after the crops.]

As the gardens overgrow and our vegetables decompose back into the soil, I grieve — for the people that have put so much time into showing up for this space, parts of us fearing or knowing we were never really going to be considered in any decision making.

When I visited the site the last few times, I felt saddened by the abandoned plots and polytunnel. Of course, the plants do curl their way through and under and over, but the site feels lonely.

We were blessed by last sweet harvests of potatoes, grapes, beans, calendula flowers and lemon balm. This is the garden I know best, the one I know how plants have moved and grown over the years, where to expect which perennials to pop up each spring, which seed might re-sprout where.

Losing this garden, feels a little like losing a part of myself. Perhaps it is time to move on.

I’ve learned our garden community exists beyond this place now, we stretch out like mycelium and meet at the library or other community growing projects.

It’s not the same, not even close, but I am grateful to know these people and their patience, their kindness and creativity.

I miss the farm community with all my heart.

With adequate support we could’ve been creating more safe community gardens and greenspace for community. Instead we ended up fighting to exhaustion to keep hold of this place and losing it anyway.

All the energy we’ve put into this, part of me can’t help but think…was it worth it?

There is a long term plan for the farm you can read here. We did ask for an interim period plan but we’re ‘only a bunch of gardeners’ so that has not come to any fruition.

Truthfully I am burnt out from being involved in this, but as I said before, the farm becomes part of you and I will always feel a special connection to it.

With love,

Johanna

Feel free to share this story and comment your thoughts.

Here’s to Gorgie Farm <3