You said, we did – a year of supporting Aberdeen’s community gardens

Last autumn, we set out to visit as many of Aberdeen’s community gardens as possible and now is a good time to reflect on everything those visits inspired.

Between October and December 2025, CFINE visited community gardens across Aberdeen to find out what was happening in their spaces, what was going well, what was difficult, what they wanted to achieve and, importantly, what support would actually be useful.

What we heard has shaped much of our community growing work over the past year.

One of the biggest messages was that gardens wanted better ways to share what they were doing. So, in May, we launched our monthly Community Growing Newsletter, promoting events, volunteering opportunities and other ways to get involved. It now has 266 subscribers.

We also created a shared calendar of community growing events and volunteer sessions, and updated Aberdeen’s Food Growing Map. The map, hosted by Aberdeen City Council, had not been updated for several years, so we contacted gardens across the city to make sure established projects had current information and that newer gardens were included.

Gardens also told us about practical things they needed: raised beds, rainwater collection, equipment and other infrastructure. We brought several of these requests together into a successful funding application to the Finnis Scott Foundation. CFINE is managing the funding on behalf of the participating gardens, with each group able to use its allocation for the needs identified. Deevale Community Garden, for example, has used its funding for water butts and accessible raised beds.

There was also a strong appetite for learning and upskilling opportunities. We began working with SRUC to explore an accredited gardening and horticulture course for people involved in community growing. We asked both garden representatives and potential participants what they would want from a course, receiving 15 responses from community garden representatives and 76 from potential participants. There is more work to do to get the course off the ground, but we now have a much clearer picture of what people want.

And then there was creativity! Gardens told us they wanted workshops, music and events that could bring people into their spaces and help them connect with their communities. That helped inspire Music in the Gardens – nine free music and creative events across Aberdeen between June and September 2026.

We also heard from several gardens that they would like to have more opportunities to meet one another. In July, we brought community garden representatives together for a shared meal, with presentations, networking and food made using produce donated by the community gardens. People told us they particularly enjoyed meeting other community gardeners, and suggested future garden visits, seedling swaps and regular meet-ups. CFINE is doing what we do best when we can support the process of ideas and energy coming from the people who are already making Aberdeen’s community gardens happen.

A year on from those first visits, we’re really glad that we shaped this year’s Community Growing work around the needs of community gardens, and we very much look forward to continuing to listen!