Any efforts we make either individually or collectively within local communities to grow at least some of the food we eat is desirable for several reasons.  

Having a few fresh herbs in small pots on a sunny windowsill, some salad leaves in a recycled container on a balcony or getting involved with your local community garden to grow fruits and roots like apples and carrots is a great place to start. If you want to grow more, apply to your local council for an allotment plot to grow crops requiring more space like squashes & pumpkins or leeks and potatoes for the soup pot.   

Growing anything yourself not only enables you to exert a degree of control over what you and your family eats and how it is produced, but it also has a number of co-benefits including: improving your physical health & mental wellbeing; meeting new people with similar interests; building community resilience; saving money and nurturing deeper connections with the natural world we all rely upon for our food. 

Regardless of where you grow, bear in mind when you are buying compost to always select a peat-free option. Peatlands play an important role in removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it long-term while also acting as a natural defence against flooding in many areas. They are an important, endangered habitat, supporting a vast array of wildlife, so removing peat from bogs to make compost to grow food in is counter-productive, damaging the environment and further threatening biodiversity.  

You could even try making your own home-made compost by putting uncooked, organic food waste like fruit and vegetable peelings on a pile in the garden or at a community garden to reduce your food waste!

In short, organic gardening could simply be described as ‘gardening with nature, not against it’, making it a more environmentally sustainable approach to gardening regardless of where you choose to grow your own food. 

It is a method that relies less on artificial chemicals to boost soil fertility and harmful pesticides to control plant pests, opting instead to focus on alternative techniques such as companion planting, crop rotation, growing a greater diversity of plants together, natural soil amendments, composting, mulches and a general ‘waste nothing’ attitude!  

Gardening organically centres on fostering a deeper sense of connection with the natural world around us, placing greater value on all biodiversity - yes, including slugs and other detritovores! - for the many interconnected roles played within complex natural systems. It acknowledges the critical importance of the various, valuable ecosystem services required for successful growing from pollination to pest control, photosynthesis to nutrient recycling, all quietly taking place all around us, all of the time, absolutely free of charge.  

RHS - Organic Gardening provides a detailed overview of the key principles of organic gardening and why it is a more sustainable approach, in ways both beneficial for the climate and nature.   

In brief, the fundamental aims of any organically managed growing space are:  

• Work to promote soil fertility by incorporating plenty of organic matter 

• Avoid the use of chemical fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides  

• Promote biodiversity to encourage natural pest control  

• Aim for variety within your planting scheme 

• Select appropriate crops best suited to the site, soil and growing conditions 

Following these basic principles should result in more successful food growing and greater resilience to pests, diseases and unpredictable growing conditions across the seasons owing to climate change without having a detrimental impact on nature.   

Fertile, well-structured soil is a crucial element of any successful food growing activity on any scale, so incorporating as much organic matter into your soil as possible is advisable. An important indicator of soil health relates to the amount of organic matter contained within it, with healthier, more fertile soils holding significant quantities of organic matter. It also means that the soil can hold moisture longer and store more carbon, reducing both the water required and the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and therefore better for the plants growing in it and for the climate. Garden Organic provides a ‘Soil Information Pack’ to help you demystify and better understand the soil you are working with.  

The Wildlife Trust offers guidance on natural, wildlife-friendly pest control methods to help you reduce your use of harmful chemicals when gardening and growing your own food. 

Ultimately, organic growing seeks to not just tolerate but to actively encourage and work alongside the natural organisms that are vitally important for crop production and soil health, underpinning the food system that we all rely on to ultimately get produce from fields and on to our forks. 

To help you decide what plants are most suitable to grow in your specific situation along with how and when to best approach it, there are some brilliant free general growing resources available online including growing guides, monthly activity calendars and seed sowing timelines. Following these useful guidelines will enable you to successfully grow a broad range of vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers across the seasons so you can enjoy fresh, home-grown produce throughout the year.  

Propagate have developed a series of highly informative and engaging resources appropriate for growing in a range of settings, from windowsills to market gardens. For any groups or individuals looking to scale-up their food growing activities, Nourish Scotland has compiled some excellent Scotland specific resources available free online. 

There are several experienced community gardens and growing groups across Lanarkshire happy to share their knowledge and advise you if you get in contact with them – find them on our map! Alternatively you could borrow some gardening books from your local library to develop your horticultural knowledge and increase your chances of successfully growing your own.  

Peat is a highly fertile type of soil common to many of the most productive areas of land on the planet. Due to its high fertility, peat has historically been greatly prized by farmers as the foundation of productive farmland and by gardeners as a component of top-quality, shop-bought compost mixes.   

Peatlands are areas of the UK where plant matter - such as sphagnum moss – has partially decomposed in slightly acidic water over millions of years to form peat soil across upland areas of bogland. It also occurs as a sublayer in lowland areas where it is stored beneath the marshland growing above.   

Deep peat seams composed of decaying roots, leaves and branches also exist in the swampy forests of the tropics. Unfortunately, many of these areas have been drained to create vast oil palm plantations, contributing to climate change and biodiversity loss.    

Peat has a very high carbon content due to its origins as plant material and can be thought of as a midway point between living plants and fossil fuels like oil and coal. Peat that is 30cm deep holds the same amount of carbon across a hectare as the same area of rainforest, while deep peat can hold ten times as much carbon as woodland*. 

Peatlands play an important role in climate regulation by sequestering and storing carbon, however this function has been compromised by decades of harmful land management practices in many areas. Carbon is locked away in peat by water, so drying it out either deliberately to drain marshes for conversion into farmland or because of climate change results in the carbon being released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2). Disturbing peatlands to extract the peat for use in the horticultural industry as a component of commercial composts has a similar effect.  

Restoring degraded peatland plays an important role in slowing climate change. One approach to peatland restoration involves taking areas of deeper peatland out of food production and flooding it in a process called ‘rewetting’ that locks carbon back up in the wet soil. As an added benefit, this wetland supports biodiversity, becoming home to wildlife including wading birds and acting as a water store during periods of high rainfall, protecting nearby settlements from severe flooding.  

Growing crops on rewetted, restored peatland – known as paludiculture, or ‘bog-farming’ - is a potential solution to using land for growing crops alongside benefitting wildlife and storing carbon. Commercial development is in its infancy and there remain a number of barriers to overcome regarding how to sow, grow and harvest paludicultural food crops suited to growing in boggy wetlands and developing a market for such products. 

Areas of severely degraded, thinner peat soils or where peat has been removed altogether can be gradually improved through regenerative farming techniques to increase the soils' ability to store more carbon once again.

*UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology

Biochar is produced by burning woody plant material – such as coppiced willow or alder - in a furnace without oxygen (pyrolysis) and then burying it underground, in a process similar to making charcoal. Done properly, this process also generates renewable electricity and heat. 

Biochar is not a fertiliser but is valuable as a soil amendment due to its ability to provide homes for microbial life within the tiny pore spaces – formerly the cells and channels of the living plants – and therefore promote soil bacteria, vital for healthy, fertile soils.  

Growing plants from seed is fun, fascinating and fairly cheap (or free if you save your own seeds or swap with other growers! Check out Lanarkshire Seed Savers Network).   

Although most seed suppliers still offer a relatively broad range of crop varieties to choose from, many of the traditional, heritage varieties favoured by gardeners over generations have been removed from catalogues and are becoming increasingly harder to source.   

Using open-pollinated seeds enables you to save your own seed from mature plants in future and experiment with growing a broad range of tried-and-tested varieties that will gradually adapt to your own specific, local growing conditions and a changing climate.  

Saving seed from the strongest plants from one season to the next used to be common practice amongst home growers, allowing them to select for desirable traits, swap seeds with friends and neighbours and to develop localised varieties better suited to local environmental conditions. This vital skill has dwindled in recent years but there is growing interest and appreciation of the importance of seed-saving   

To find out more about seed-saving and seed sovereignty visit: 

Real Seeds – Why Save Seed? 

The Gaia Foundation - Scotland 

Seeds of Scotland 

To find out more about the loss of genetic diversity in plant varieties (“agrobiodiversity”) and why it is significant visit:   

FAO – What is ‘Agrobiodiversity’? 

Increasing our reliance on a narrower selection of crop varieties limits our options in the garden, reduces opportunities to experiment with cultivating a diverse range of interesting varieties exhibiting different characteristics including flavours and compromises our food security, climate resilience and ability to develop crops better able to grow successfully in changing and challenging growing conditions, both now and in the future.  

Sowing seeds is just one method of plant propagation. Other common methods include taking cuttings, layering and root division – all of which enable growers to quickly and economically increase their stock of plants.   

There is a wealth of detailed information available both online and in gardening books to guide you on all these methods and to help you decide on the most suitable technique for the specific plants you are looking to grow more of.    

To find out more visit the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS):   

Sowing Seeds 

Taking Root Cuttings 

Taking Softwood Cuttings 

Taking Hardwood Cuttings 

Layering 

Root Division 

Lanarkshire has a long, rich history of fruit production, blessed with growing conditions favourable to cultivating many fruit trees including apples, pears, plums & cherries along with soft fruits such as currants, gooseberries, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. 

Growing fruit is extremely rewarding and means you can eat freshly picked produce at the peak of its ripeness, at a fraction of supermarket prices. By growing some of your own fruit, you're reducing the carbon footprint associated with transporting fruits from farms to the shops. Plus, you can use more sustainable practices like organic gardening, composting, mulching, and using rainwater, all of which contribute to a healthier local ecosystem. 

Establishing fruit trees and bushes in any growing space is highly beneficial where space allows, increasing the diversity of food being grown while also offering shade on hot days, capturing carbon [link to Greenspaces ‘Tree-planting’] from the atmosphere and providing shelter and nectar for wildlife including birds and pollinating insects.  

Community Action Lanarkshire - The Orchards of Lanark So Fair gives a fascinating overview of the rich history of fruit growing along the Clyde and Avon Valleys. 

There were once numerous productive orchards throughout the region which have since been abandoned and neglected but could potentially be revived and regenerated to bear fruit once again in the future.  

Orchard Revival are Scotland’s charity for traditional orchards helping to promote the revival of abandoned orchards for the benefit of the wider public. 

The Orchard Project - Bringing orchards into the heart of urban communities  

UK Orchard Network - Scottish Orchard Groups 

Forest gardening is a sustainable and low-maintenance approach to growing food that mimics the structure and dynamics of a natural forest. The idea is to create an edible garden with multiple layers of plants, with different types of plants growing in different vertical zones. This includes trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants, ground cover, and even vines. The goal is to create a self-sustaining ecosystem that requires minimal human intervention once it's established.  

In a forest garden, you might have: 

1. Canopy layer: Tall, fruit or nut trees, like apples, pears, or walnuts. 
2. Understory layer: Smaller trees or large shrubs, such as hazelnuts, dwarf fruit trees, or elderberries. 
3. Herbaceous layer: Perennials like comfrey, mint, and garlic, which grow low to the ground. 
4. Ground cover: Low-growing plants that help suppress weeds and retain moisture, like strawberries. 
5. Root layer: Edible or medicinal root crops, like garlic or ginger. 
6. Vertical layer: Climbing plants, such as beans, peas, or even grape vines. 

Similar to organic gardening principles, the idea of forest gardening is to work with nature instead of against it. By designing a space that’s diverse and mimics natural systems, forest gardening can be resilient, productive, and low-maintenance over time. These systems also encourage biodiversity and help with soil health, water retention, and natural pest control. 

To find out more about forest gardens, visit the following organisations’ websites: 

Agroforestry Research Trust – Forest Gardening 

Centre for Alternative Technology – The Edible Forest Garden 

Permaculture Association – Forest Gardens 

Renewable energy sources can play a key role in increasing the sustainability and efficiency of food growing projects. By incorporating renewable energy to power some elements of growing activities, growers can reduce their environmental impact, extend their growing season, lower costs, and become more resilient to climate change.  

Solar panels or wind turbines could be installed on off-grid sites to generate electricity to heat greenhouses, provide the power for charging power tools, operate automated irrigation systems to reduce trips with watering cans or to boil the kettle to warm chilly hands up on frosty days.  

Incorporating renewable energy into food growing projects is good for the climate and environment for several reasons including:  

• Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Renewable energy sources like solar and wind produce little to no emissions, helping mitigate climate change. 

• Conserves Resources: Unlike fossil fuels, renewables are sustainable and don't deplete natural resources.   

• Reduces Pollution: Clean energy production generates far less air, water, and soil pollution, promoting healthier ecosystems.  

Find out more about renewable energy use on community gardens and urban farms by accessing this resource produced by Social Farms and Gardens. 

N.B: Renewable energy for growing projects is not to be confused with ‘Biofuels’! 

Crops grown for the purpose of energy production are known as ‘biofuels’. Examples include maize, sugar beet, oilseed rape and miscanthus which are harvested and fed into anaerobic digester plants. 

Generally speaking, these biofuels - also known as ‘bioenergy crops’ - are an inefficient use of land and generate low levels of energy in relation to the area and inputs required to grow them. When grown on disturbed peatlands, the carbon emissions associated with their cultivation is amplified and can be comparable to burning fossil fuels such as coal.