Gardeners at the Persevere Garden could be forgiven for getting a little frustrated recently. Having got access to the garden in May, it was discovered after a great deal of digging that the ground was decidedly patchy. In some places the soil only seemed to be a few inches deep. Unsurprisingly people were a wee bit reluctant to plant in these conditions, and Greener Leith put out a request for some top soil. 

The Council Neighbourhood Partnership rode to the rescure and really came up trumps - they provided us with some lovely looking stuff, full of worms, and other happy looking insects. Everyone at the garden is really grateful to all the council workers involved in getting the soil to the garden, just in time for our open day, last Saturday.
About 15 volunteers turned up on the day - a good mixture of local residents, regular Greener Leithers and some new faces. We spread our top soil out, and finally managed to plant some of our free wiggly wigglers potatoes. These 'Main Late crop' potatoes should provide us with our first crop of locally grown food from the garden. After all the hard work to get this far, it was great to see something actually going into the ground.

We weren't just digging. Simon, from the Woodworks was on site to give volunteers a chance to put together some bat boxes made from recycled wood, and Nigel, a volunteer from the Lothians Bat Group stayed all afternoon, reeling off more bat facts than any biodiversity professional I've ever met.

Did you know that there's even a bat hospital in East Lothian? We were fascinated, and hopefully we persuaded Nigel to write an article on the activities of the Lothian Bat Group for this website at a later date. Especially if he can send us some cute bat pictures.

You would think that all this digging, building and shifting would tire out our volunteers. But no, the very next day, Linda, Dawn and yours truly all completed the Great Scottish Walk, raising money for the garden. Dawn in particular raised a fantastic amount in sponsorship, so special thanks should be given to her. As the garden is not core funded Dawns efforts will allow the group to buy more plants, tools and equipment to improve the garden.

If you were at the event and took any photos - why not add them to the new Greener Leith photo group on Flickr?