By Shona Robin MacPherson

As I prepare to leave Kinning Park Complex, I’ve been reflecting on the year and a half I’ve spent involved in helping to build and care for the community garden as part of my role as Community Coordinator (Administration & Communications). My initial role was Front of House, and the garden was the most front-facing part of the 'house', as it is the area you pass through to enter the building. This experience has been truly life-affirming and a complete honour to be part of. Seeing people come together around a shared mission, making connections with others and with the earth, learning new skills and building confidence; has been such a joy.

The project began in a very hands-on, collaborative way when we salvaged old raised beds from Locavore’s former Bellahouston site. With help from Glasgow Autonomous Space, Beti from Movement in Thyme (MiT), and Rod who drove the van, the beds arrived at KPC - carrying with them the spirit that has defined the whole project: people sharing skills, ideas, time and labour to create something collectively. 

Early in 2025, I began working closely with Ailee Burns from Glasgow Community Food Network, who was already running garden and food workshops through the Food and Climate Action Project. Although KPC isn’t a formal partner in that five-year project, GCFN has been interwoven with KPC’s journey of recovery since the major refurbishment in 2022, and even further back in our history. Together, Ailee and I began reimagining the garden, which hadn’t been fully reconsidered since the refurbishment was completed.

In February, as part of the community meal, we hosted the 2025 Garden Launch event. We invited Lusi Alderslowe from Propagate to give a short introduction to seeds and permaculture. The event brought in new volunteers, including Scott Cameron, who had recently been running a mushroom farm and later joined the Community Champignon Project at Govanhill Baths. Lindsay McGhie, now KPC’s Chair, cooked a beautiful seed-themed lunch; children decorated 'magic beans', we made seed balls and we gathered ideas from the community on a whiteboard as well as through an online outdoor space survey accessed via QR code.

Images above from our garden launch event Feb 2025

The responses shaped the year ahead. People asked for herbs, vegetables, fruits, pollinator-friendly plants, places to sit, gather and rest, a mud kitchen, play areas, more wildlife, more workshops, and clearer signage - including multilingual signs to make the space more welcoming. These ideas fed directly into our application for Glasgow Community Food Network’s Peer Budgeting Award, The Lifecycle of Food. The £500 we received, combined with Ailee’s small budget and a huge amount of goodwill, formed the backbone of our 2025 programme.

From spring onwards, we ran gardening sessions every Monday afternoon after the community meal. The group that formed was wonderfully mixed: people with no gardening experience at all, to people with decades of it like Norman who regularly volunteered at Chatelherault Country Park, and members of the Simon Community’s Preventing Asylum Homelessness peer support group - including Paul, who had previously worked in agricultural planning in Nigeria and brought invaluable insight into soil, waste systems and growing practices. Chris, a long-time friend of KPC and guerrilla gardener, kept us entertained and on our toes with stories and catchphrases. Over countless cups of tea, a genuine community grew alongside the plants.

Workshops became a big part of the year as well. Glasgow Trades Collective helped us build a mud kitchen and bird boxes - both ideas that came out of our survey. We learned meadow management and scything with Ida Fabrizio, who also helped us learn how to manage our small meadow area - a true urban wilderness. We explored foraging with Jemima Hall, and built wormeries with Jenny McGilvery from GCFN, learnt more about seed saving with Glasgow Seed Library and started a small collection of KPC seeds. Movement in Thyme ran herbal workshops complete with teas and even herbal hot chocolate at a March community meal. Scott led mushroom workshops, and as the months went on the format often became more volunteer-led skillshares, including apple tree propagation with Paul and the creation of a new mushroom bed with Scott.

In June, we hosted a mid-year garden planning session - a chance for volunteers to help decide how we would use our funding and rethink aspects of the space. We discussed signage, the compost area, and the shed, and heard more about the history of the site from Lindsey and Ailee. Members of the local care home joined us, adding their own stories and knowledge. It was clear during this session that there was excitement and a sense of ownership within the community and everyone was keen to see what we could do next, including building the compost bays and installing some garden signage. Together we also wrote a mission statement which would help to guide future plans:

KPC community garden aims to:

- Provide a safe space, year round, where people from the local community can meet, grow, play and connect with nature

- Provide a source of affordable, culturally relevant food for community members & the community meal

- Provide opportunities for community members to learn & practice new skills through workshops & volunteering sessions

- Promote good mental health & wellbeing

Alongside this, I was completing a Permaculture Design Certificate with Lusi and Cat Train, visiting community gardens across Glasgow - from Incredible Edible Neilston to Ally Park Food Forest and The Concrete Garden - each one full of ideas and inspiration. As part of the course, four different design proposals were created for the KPC site: a warm outdoor space, a water design, and two full-site redesigns. I worked on the warm space design with Jane, Karen and Marta, and in November we shared all four designs with the garden volunteers so they could help imagine what the garden might become in 2026.

One of my favourite parts of this whole project was seeing how much of the food we grew was actually eaten by the community. Potatoes donated via Propagate were planted, harvested and cooked for a community meal. We shared herbs, peas, chives, beetroot, salads, squash and more. Young people from Inclusive Homework Club would visit during the summer holiday clubs to eat peas straight from the plants. A member from Unity Sisters regularly took produce home for dinner. A local toddler came often with her mum to learn plant names and, later, to play in the mud kitchen. The harvest also made its way into community meals throughout the summer and autumn, cooked lovingly by our volunteer community chefs Ailee, Eva and Rachel.

Produce above from July & August which made it into the community meals.

We also created a special 'Herby planter' early in the year, filled with herbs laid out with guidance from Beti Scott and Rox from Movement in Thyme - lavender, thyme, pineapple sage, lovage and others chosen for their uses in teas, cooking and wellbeing.

As I leave my role at the end of November, I hope to continue being part of the garden as a volunteer. I am incredibly grateful for everything we’ve created together, the conversations, the learning, the laughter, the muddy hands, the shared meals, and the friendships formed between people who might never otherwise have met. The garden has become a space shaped by everyone who steps into it, and I’m excited to see how it continues to grow as KPC moves toward the anniversary of the sit-in and all the celebrations that next year will bring.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey and for putting up with my garden obsession and constant compost chat.

Photos taken by Shona and taken with consent