Supporting Edinburgh residents to work together and create bountiful, shared greenspaces.
Edinburgh Community Backgreens Association is a community organisation which inspires and supports tenement dwellers to work with their neighbours to create beautiful and bountiful community backgreens. These are shared greenspaces behind tenement squares which share common facilities like tool sheds or play facilities for children.
We also run a series of courses to help folk on the way to creating bountiful backgreens. Topics include grow your own, pruning, forest gardening and many more.
Why the community needs usOver half of Edinburgh's reisdents live in tenements with shared backgreens. Mnay of these are derelict and unloved. By regenerating overlooked jungles into bountiful shared gardens, we unlock a huge amount of unused greenspace, which is a real benefit for folk in the city.
These city-dwelling tenement residents don't necessarily know thier neighbours anymore. We work to rebuild community connections, by creating shared community gardens as focus points for all sorts of folk to meet.
Our impact on the communityCreating shared community gardens and running courses has many benefits:
-Improving physical and mental wellbeing through increased access to greenspace
-Providing a space for community interaction, deepening community resiliance.
-Offering new skills in food growing and self sufficiancy, bringing increasing confidence and a heightened environmental awareness.
-Contributing to local sustainability through composting, waste reduction and local food growing.
Backgreen Blitzers: folk to join a pool of volunteer community gardeners, helping regenerate greenspace accross Edinburgh. No prior skills other than enthusiasm required.
General campaigning and raising awareness for the project. Some office based administration and project work.
