Thurso Grows Update

As we slowly start to get a hint or two that Spring is on its’s way, we thought it might be nice to share how excited we are for the 2022 season at the community gardens and all that we hope to achieve and focus on for this year as growers in the far North!

We have been brave, and brought our potatoes, and we have started chitting! Has anyone else? Aw and planning - we have been doing lots of plotting and planning for the coming season, and have some exciting projects to share and events to already pop into your diaries.

Ormlie Community Gardens

At the gardens this year we plan to focus on and fortify our amazing volunteer team and their strengths and learnings! We are looking at ways to give more “ownership” of the space to our group - to support them in their learning and growing while allowing some of the natural leaders in the group to come forth and take more ownership.

We have some space for new faces, and would love to meet anyone interested in joining our team.

NOW is the time to start your growing journey with Thurso Grows. We are particularly looking for “core team” volunteers - who might want to commit time, energy and knowledge sharing to help our garden grow! If you’re interested and want to find out more, contact Sharon at sharon@thursocdt.co.uk

We have two new exciting town projects -

The Precinct Planters and the gardens in Rotterdam Street…

The Precinct planters is a project that we have where we will plant up 13 large planters in the town, which will be filled with food, fruit, flowers and bee forage! We aim to make these a sort of “help yourself” green space in the town, encouraging food education and community engagement. If you are a local shop to the precinct and fancy getting involved we would love to hear from you.

With thanks to the Town Centre Regeneration Fund, local councilors and John Cunningham and Grodon of Meilkejohn’s Garage for supporting this project.

Our other new exciting project is the gardens behind the new Zero Waste shop in the town. The space is small, but well proportioned, and we plan to make a welcoming, community area that can be used for workshops, meetings, volunteers and staff of the Trust and Socially Growing. Though we have just started this small project, we are excited to see it evolve and will post updates as it flourishes! We want to thank the volunteers that have signed up to help these new projects thrive!

Community Growing Network

As the gardens in Ormlie grow and flourish we find ourselves more and more often getting contacted by local projects who are keen to start some community growing themselves! We want to do all we can to encourage new growers in the area, so are keen to start a network - where local growing projects can support, advise and learn together… watch this space for more news of this, but we look forward to sharing more details as they evolve.

We have some dates for your diary:

Sunday 1st May - Open Day at the Ormlie Community Gardens / Pollinator Event - where we will be sharing top tips, plants and projects you can do to encourage pollinators into your garden.

Saturday 25th June - Open day at the Ormlie Community Gardens (Part of Climate Week)

Saturday 24th September - Open day at the Ormlie Community Gardens