We love grass roots community organisations and what they can do to support their locals, so when Dee in our Business Development Team found out about Granton Community Gardeners and what they're doing she was delighted to be able to offer them our monthly donation and got in touch to find out more about how they came into being and their activities. It's an inspiring story that proves that when people come together for the good of the community, great things can happen.
1. Tell us about how it all started and a little more about Granton Garden Bakery & Community Gardeners
Granton Community Gardeners started when a group of neighbours on Wardieburn Road, got together to dig up a disused bit of land on a street corner to start a community garden in 2010. Slowly the idea spread through the area, with neighbours from other streets starting similar gardens, and people helping each other. We also started to share meals together. In 2017 we became a charity, and with help of some funding from the Scottish Govt. we started hosting free community meals open to all every week.
In 2014 we started growing Scottish heritage wheat on street corners. We were given the grain from a charity called ‘Scotland the Bread’, who also supported us to thresh and mill the wheat. We started a baking group called ‘Bread Club’, and in 2019, started Granton Garden Bakery, a very small scale enterprise, baking once a week, with the aim of making the best possible bread available and accessible in our community (which is not the sort of community where artisan bread is available). For the past 6 years we’ve been selling loaves on a Pay What You Can basis: If you’re stressed for money, pay very little, if you can and want to support what we do, then we invite people to pay more.
We’re currently looking to expand our bakery into much larger premises to be able to scale up our work, create more local jobs, and make more good bread available. We’re also still growing our wheat, and saving seed every year. We don’t grow nearly enough to supply our bakery (we buy flour from farmers we know in East Lothian and Fife via Greencity Wholefoods), but we have teamed up with nearby Lauriston Farm, where we will be growing a few acres in the next season.
2. Can you tell us a little bit of what you will do with the donation?
We will use it to support our selling bread at a discount to people who need it.
3. What other things are going on at Granton Garden Bakery & Community Growers?
We’ve got our Harvest Festival at the garden coming up at the end of this month. We’re making some improvements at the garden, building a new shelter for cooking and eating under in wet weather. We host a chicken cooperative, where a dozen local families/households, joint own a flock of egg laying hens. We’re doing a project to survey all the different species (plants, birds, insects, mammals, fungi, etc) we share our local community with. We’re working on plans to plant several hundred fruit trees throughout our area. And we’re planning a big move for the bakery (just down the road) early 2026..
4. Tell us a bit more about any other things you do to support the local community
We’re a membership organisation, so our members are involved in a wide range of things, and we try and support any local initiatives that fit with our charitable aims. We also host a ‘freeshop’ distributing donated clothes, toys, household items etc. And we’re involved in lots of joint projects, like hosting Dr Bike - bike fixing sessions, and the big community tattie patch at Lauriston Farm - where volunteers from different organisations and groups have been helping plant, tend, harvest and distribute potatoes.
5. Is there anything members of the public can do to support your organisation?
If you live nearby, come and join in! Otherwise, we always accept donations, especially as we’re raising money to expand our bakery.There’s a donate button on our website: www.grantoncommunitygardeners.org
6. If you could invite 6 people, living or dead, to one of your community meals who would you invite and why?
This is a very hard question, and we’d need to discuss it with all the people at our current community meals to decide. We’d likely end up with significant figures from a wide range of different cultures, and that could lead to some great conversation.
