KPC garden group & community meals

About a year ago, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to pick up an extra day of delivery supporting our long-time pals over at KPC with food related activities. This has been mostly split between supporting the fortnightly community meals, and working alongside the garden group to develop the space & host some workshops. 

We were thrilled to welcome 2 new volunteer community chefs to the team at the start of summer. It has been great fun working alongside them to create menus featuring seasonal produce. Highlights this summer have been chickpea curries, mujadara, bean stews, baked potatoes & endless seasonal crumbles! Where possible, meals consist of a soup, main & dessert, and use ingredients grown in the garden. There is always vegan, halal & gluten free options available.

Thanks to our wonderful volunteers at KPC, the meal has grown in capacity & we’re delighted that numbers of attendees appears to be growing every week!

Borscht (beetroot soup) with beetroots grown in our raised beds:        

Chickpea curry with crispy potatoes, harvested fresh from the garden, and salad from the garden:

Outside, the garden group meets every Monday, 2-4pm. On community meal days, the group can have their lunch together, before getting stuck into the garden. We have a mix of open gardening sessions, and organised workshops. Read on to find out what we’ve been up to over the summer:

14^th July:

We had a Garden Planning Meeting with volunteers, staff and community members about what they would like to see the outdoor space at KPC being used for. It’s been really important to us that the garden is shaped by the community. In this meeting, we collective came up with our community garden mission statement:

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

11^th of August:

on the 11th of Aug, the garden group built their very own compost bays using mostly scrap pallets & bits of wood. Our group is made up of people from all over the world, and I really enjoyed learning different words for compost, soil & different plants in this session.

The bays are the newest addition to our composting system. We already have a hotbin & a wormery, both of which are open to the public to use. We would love to invite the local community to drop off their food waste, & help us to make compost to nourish our community garden, so we can keep producing food for local people. Please join our Make Soil site to find out more: Kinning Park Complex | MakeSoil

A huge thanks to our volunteers for helping to build the composting bays. We are loving building our community garden together every Monday!

18^th of August:

On the 18^th of July, the garden group welcomed Glasgow Trades Collective, who delivered a bird box building workshop! For many of our participants (me included!), this was their first experience of doing any DIY, and we all feel much more confident with a drill. We want KPC to be a thriving home to all kinds of wildlife, and we can’t wait to see what creatures decide to take shelter in the bird boxes over the cooler months.

Glasgow Trade’s Collective also built our beautiful mud kitchen, which is proudly sat in our wildflower meadow. Here is volunteer, Chris, proudly modelling it before the sink, pots & pans were added: 

A big thanks to Glasgow Trade Collective, and our incredible volunteers.

Inclusive homework club summer session at KPC:

I was thrilled to join Inclusive Homework Club for their summer project, where the young people got their hands dirty learning all about the food system. From sowing seeds, watering crops, harvesting & cooking a full meal with veggies from the garden, right to composting any food scraps. Nothing went to waste!

We finished the session by writing letters of thanks to our wriggly friends who live in the earth & keep our soils healthy – worms!