The Lions Gate is taking part in the GROW Observatory’s polyculture vs monoculture citizen science experiment starting on May 1st. We’ll be growing a polyculture from seed that includes radish, french beans and spinach.
In line with our digital layer, I’m hoping to set up a solar powered, 12v networked time-lapse camera to capture the whole process too.
Third year computing students have been developing a design for our Lions Gate WordPress blog/website, which when finished will reside at: blogs.napier.ac.uk/thelionsgate.
The brief was to design a positive, inspiring look and feel, with a strong lion motif.
I’m very happy with what they’ve achieved thus far. See images below.
Many thanks to Earth Calling, and our first three volunteers Fabian, Gabrielle and Lucie for all their help yesterday making raised beds for our rooftop allotment and shifting those enormous logs from the kitchen area to The Lions Gate. You are all awesome, and the beds look great!
It’s been a challenging process, but Kat and I with the help of the university Health & Safety group have carried out risk assessments and identified suitable insurance certificates to enable volunteer input to The Lions Gate Project.
We’ve also drawn up a Volunteer Policy – with associated forms (consent for use of media, induction checklist and registration document), as well as an evaluation form to gather data on visitor and volunteer experiences of The Lions Gate Project. Thanks to the Research and Innovation Office for supplying an evaluation template that we rejigged for our purposes.
Today, we have three volunteers, Fabien, Lucie and Gabrielle visiting to test the process and help us refine it. Gabrielle and Lucie are kick-starting a similar project at The University of Edinburgh’s Kings Buildings.
I contacted Albert Houston at Edinburgh Napier Stores to see if we could repurpose anything they had up there and so eek more value out of it. He was happy to oblige and today we brought back some crates, stools, chairs and a filing cabinet. Many thanks Albert et al.
Cablecom Electrics have started installing power and data points for us in The Lions Gate and our Keder poly tunnel on the rooftop allotment, enabling the interactive layer of our design to start taking shape.
Guys from Garden Solutions in East Lothian delivered soils, composts, sand, vermiculite, and gravel to the Keder greenhouse today, so we have all we need to start growing. We have two tonnes of mushroom-spent compost and a tonne of horse manure coming next month.
I marked out a meandering, wheelchair accessible path in the Lions gate today for the Estates department to get a quote for the work. The plan is to lay an ochre-coloured hoggin path, edged with wood that will wind its way along the garden from reception area, through food forest, over the entertainment space and up to the ‘digital bothy’. We hope to have it in place by the end of March.
Our 6m x 3m Keder polytunnel/greenhouse was erected today. The guys have travelled up from Evesham in the Cotswolds and worked their socks off, so it was assembled in under six hours on our rooftop kitchen allotment, round the back of the kitchen’s at Merchiston.
I had visited the Keder stall during our interactive permaculture exhibit at Scotland’s Garden Festival back in June 2017 and was impressed by its design and the way that its bubblewrap-esque material was able to take what light is available and scatter more of it interiorly. The kitchen allotment site has a challenging amount of sunlight so it’s good fit. A considerable amount of food and herbs can be grown in here for student, staff and visitor stomachs. Here begins our circular food economy, scope for medicinal growing, and much research too.
Thanks to support from Gordon Solway and Kat Dunlop (the harmonious gardener) we’ve managed to cut back all the shrubs and trees that we’ve removed from the Lions Gate – giving us lots of material to shred (with recently purchased shredder!) and add to the soil to enrich it before planting. There’s scope for some art with this stuff too!
We also took delivery of five free tonnes of compost from Edinburgh Council, via Forth Resource Management – you only pay for delivery and the bags (£65 all in). Thanks to Gordon and Kat for helping to shovel two tonnes of it into The Lions Gate.
