Penicuik community food project

PENICUIK COMMUNITY FOOD PROJECT

An initiative of the Penicuik Community Development Trust

See the 2009 Prospectus for the Food Project Walled Garden Restoration here

On Friday 15 July 2011 the Trust’s volunteers met our legal advisers Kirsty Macpherson and Evalyn Lee of Gillespie Macandrew to establish the terms of our acceptance of a 30 year lease of the Walled Gardens above Penicuik House. We are now very close to the major step of taking up occupation of the walled garden with a view to Penicuik food production and restoration of the garden’s unique structures and horticultural interest.

Our efforts to take on a lease of the walled garden have taken nearly two years - much longer than expected –but we are now nearly there: drawing up the inventory of the condition of garden and buildings with a view to our occupation before the growing season is over.

Hear about the next steps on the food project

and how you can take part at any of our Saturday Open House sessions in Penicuik Town Hall 10am-2pm, our Open Days at Bank Mill or Sunday evening Cinema presentations in the Town Hall

For details see the Trust website www.penicuikcdt.org.uk

and the project website www.makers.org.uk/penicuik/food.

Until the summer of 2011 we have been waiting for Penicuik Estate to produce a lease for our occupancy of the Walled Garden. PCDT and Sir Robert Clerk have been keen to proceed without delay, the Trust has £750 funding support towards legal costs from Midlothian Council, the estate lawyers Anderson Strathern are standing by and the estate factors Smiths Gore have now drafted Heads of Agreement as a basis for us all to proceed. The Trust has already converted itself to a Company Limited by Guarantee in order to sign the lease (its charity status and number remain the same). Last year we looked at our food project and at all the other ways we can help to make our towns more sustainable places to live. On 14 Feb 2010 Mel Spence spoke about the Midlothian Gardens Project. We looked at where negotiations stand today on the Penicuik Walled Garden. On 14 March John Forbes from the Energy Saving Trust spoke and we also related our plans to Roslin and other towns along the Esk, to Midlothian Council, and to Transition Towns nearby.

Back in 2009 we met in Penicuik Town Hall on Sunday 8 November to follow up on tasks set at our 11 October gathering there and the site visits to exchange information on progress and priorities, sketch out the next steps, and how best to work together to

· restore the walled garden off Carlops Road at Penicuik estate

· increase food growing opportunities all over Penicuik

· develop a local produce market

· Spread the word about growing and local food

· Exploit health and education aspects of local working gardens

· Help similar garden projects across Midlothian

· Partner schools and other organisations

Background

PENICUIK

COMMUNITY FOOD PROJECT

COMMUNITY FOOD GROWING, CLIMATE CHALLENGE, AND PEAK OIL

We started back on Sunday 26 April 2009 with a public meeting in the Town Hall to explore a community food growing project for Penicuik. Whether they had youth or experience to offer, or were potential users of healthy local produce, or were on the waiting list for an allotment, or just interested in finding out more, over 50 people came along. They came to see The Power of Community (a 50 minute film about peak oil and food growing in Cuba) and to find ways for Penicuik to develop a more satisfying and sustainable future. They looked at prospects for growing food in a general community project in the old upper walled gardens of the Penicuik estate off the Carlops Road, a more particular residents’ example behind the Peebles Road at Alderbank, and at other places in the town. The meeting was introduced by Roger Kelly, one of the advisers to the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund, and speakers included Bosco Santimano, founder of the Peebles-based food initiative You Can Cook which is active in Beeslack High School

All over the world, community targets are being set. President Obama is leading his nation to a lower carbon future, London’s mayor is aiming to reduce London’s carbon dioxide emissions by 60% and decentralise 25% of its energy generation by 2025. Already in nearly 120 projects around Scotland supported by the Climate Challenge Fund, local groups are working together to devise ways to live better for less, whether by insulation projects, walking buses, micro power generation, and food projects like the Fife Diet (think global, eat local). Many communities have become involved in the Transition Town movement. In Edinburgh, Backgreens are being improved for food and recreation.

The meeting considered increasing food growing in gardens, creating a public growing project and more self-run allotments. Carrying forward projects like the walled garden and Alderbank will need careful negotiation with landowners, sensitivity to neighbours, attention to safety and security, and a lot of hard work. We showed pictures of points of access and some of the land involved, including aerial views showing each site's extent and context. Local resident Morag Macdonald described Alderbank and the need for child-friendly outcomes. Dalmeny walled garden grower Alexis Beddoe explained the advantages of forest gardening and fresh local herbs. 40 people left their names for future contact, keen to take ideas forward and keep up the momentum. Penicuik Community Development Trust's charitable status can shelter and support the project at least to start with. Find out more at the Trust's Saturday Open House in the Town Hall, via 677854, and on the project website www.makers.org.uk/penicuik/food .

Penicuik Community Food Project

South Kirk Penicuik
Architect: Pilkington Penicuik Community Food Project
Alderbank

Penicuik Community Food Project
Alderbank

Four representatives of the Penicuik Community Food Project had a preliminary discussion with the Penicuik House estate factor, Katherine Storrar, and Sir Robert Clerk in Penicuik on Tuesday 26 May. We touched on project aims, timescales, long-term arrangements, short-term harvesting and removal of treecrop, access, water, structures, security, for the Walled Garden; plus Alderbank and the needs and wishes of residents there. Roger Kelly arranged the discussion to explore scope for progressing the Project with the estate, following up the public meeting in Penicuik Town Hall on Sunday 26 April. Roger Hipkin was present as Secretary of the Penicuik Community Development Trust, the constituted charity we'd expect to use -at least initially- for any formal arrangements over the walled garden. Morag McDonald was there to explore the specific conditions at Alderbank and report the wishes of the adjoining residents in Alderbank and Peebles Road. And Alexis Beddoe was there to add the perspective of his experience of food production in walled gardens at Dalmeny and Blyth Bridge.

This discussion was a good start, and we can now get down to business. Preliminary conclusions are these. The estate is willing to explore taking the project further, looking for a business case and evidence of continuity and long term intentions before negotiating any lease. The estate understands the charity's need for a long lease. There are two elements of the project in the walled garden, food growing and repairing the garden structures in the right way. With this in mind, sensible boundaries for the walled garden project area will be found. The estate will consider ways they might harvest and remove the conifer crop initially. Plenty of water is available at the walled garden. Vehicle access would be at the top, by track from the NW. Any access top and bottom from the new car park at the Timpany gate would be pedestrian only. Security has been a problem in the past. The Project representatives were made aware of the work of therapeutic charity Trellis at Haddo House and elsewhere. The Penicuik Estate Partners asked for an outline business plan for the Project’s use of the walled garden by 19 June 2009.

As far as Alderbank was concerned, any potential project was dependent on residents' views, and having considered the possibilities the adjoining residents preferred not to proceed with this element and it has been dropped.

The Food Project was given unanimous support at Penicuik Community Development Trust’s busy open public Annual General Meeting in Penicuik Town Hall on 2 June 2009. Recommendations from the floor included involvement of schools and young people in the project, co-ordination with other Midlothian food and gardening initiatives by Social Enterprises like ours, use of other Penicuik asset spaces in the town (Jackson Street School, Eastfield School, Eskmills Social facilities land (former YMCA) were suggested. Penicuik Town Hall, Jackson Street School and Ladywood Community Centre and schools were suggested for marketing. A mini Farmers Market was suggested as part of the Trust’s weekly open house in the Town Hall.

Under the aegis of Penicuik Community Development Trust a prospectus on the walled garden aspect of the food project was put together for Penicuik Estate Partnership, the garden’s landowners and submitted on 19 June 2009. A qualified but favourable reply from the landowners was confirmed in writing. The contents of the report were shown in full at a public exhibition in Penicuik Town Hall on 11 July 2009. More people are encouraged to come forward to offer services in the many aspects of the project as it develops. July 2009 pictures of the walled garden in its present derelict state are shown here. Further meetings in the Town Hall, with potential partners, and on-site took place in the autumn of 2009, and a first grant application for £750 to cover startup lease costs was awarded by Midlothian Council in late spring 2010. The Trust had earlier prepared a business plan for its parallel project at Jackson Street School. This contained proposals for an in-town market. Sadly these were thwarted at the eleventh hour early in 2010 by Midlothian Council’s demolition of the buildings, and the Trust has now brought forward a rather different in-town project at Bank Mill to take its place. The Food Project still awaits agreement on the draft lease from Penicuik Estate Partnership, though both sides are progressing this at the end of 2010. Not long now we hope! Meanwhile we discussed the Project at a Midlothian meeting on Food & Health organised at Loanhead by Ailish O’Neill of NHS in September 2010 and made many useful contacts with potential partners, we have made common cause with other food and garden projects in Midlothian at a meeting at Mayfield in November 2010, and we are holding public workshops in Penicuik Town Hall at 7.30 on Wednesday 15 December 2010. See http://www.kosmoid.net/penicuik/upcoming

Penicuik Community Development Trust and the Penicuik Community Food Trust organisers hope to work closely with the Penicuik Estate Partnership, with Trellis the Scottish charity that supports, promotes, and develops the use of horticulture to improve health, well-being and life opportunities for all, with the Federation of City Farms & Community Gardens.and with other charitable groups such as Scottish Native Woods and the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society.

Some different growing and marketing examples? In London in 2002, Abel & Cole developed a non-profit scheme The Farmers Choice to deliver fresh organic fruit and vegetables to schools in London and raise 25% of the money for the schools in the process. 200 schools now take part in receiving the produce and last year they received £90,000. In East Lothian, East Coast Organics now produce over 2,000 fresh organic vegetable boxes for the Lothian market at Boggs Holdings, Pencaitland. Penicuik distribution is via the long established non-profit organic and fairtrade food co-op on Saturday mornings at Valleyfield House (now in its 21st year) which proudly helped set up the first Edinburgh box delivery service from Pillars of Hercules in 1996 and worked closely with organic grower Whitmuir Farm in its early days.