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I’ve taken myself round to the kitchen part of the garden, on the other side of the library, situated beneath a sevenstory concrete tower of classrooms and offices, hemmed in, on all sides. I’m sat at a bench and table in the allotment area. In front of me a brick library building with one thin window and a desk and seat positioned sympathetically inside. To my right an imposing Stalinist fire escape, crying out for an imaginative intervention; to my left the back door of the kitchens, maybe 20 food metres away. Here we’ve erected a polytunnel. This morning I could barely get in as runaway nasturtiums had claimed the doorway. Inside we have power and data feeds and are growing spinach, tomatoes, celery, rocket, radishes, sunflowers and potatoes. We have a dwarf peach tree that always seems to fruit. We store a pizza oven and tea urn in here and with students are developing a sensor system to control and monitor the growing conditions. Surrounding me are 15 raised timber beds. This season, overflowing with five varieties of potato. We’re also growing beetroot, carrots, coriander, raspberries, onions, garlic, and a multitude of herbs. There is a tyre stack of rhubarb and another one with a huge flowering sage. A one metre square bed is dedicated to exploring the layers of a food forest in miniature. Some of the other beds have fruit trees in their Academic Community Looking back to the beginnings of this permaculture-inspired techno gardens (lab)itat, I see I was lucky to have sympathetic gate-keepers in the School of Computing, Engineering and Built Environment who supported its aims academically (what might regenerative computing look like?); and in Properties and Facilities who provided funding to get it off the ground – the Director of Estates at the time had been involved in a hospital greening project and knew the benefits that green urban spaces have on health and wellbeing. A great many people have contributed to this unrelenting vision of a healthier, nature-focused form of educational workplace. Hundreds of student projects have wrestled with what happens to design when you put permaculture in the centre of your thinking. Colleagues have volunteered their time to maintain the spaces and help at events, and volunteers from the local community and beyond have provided much needed support throughout: most recently a Ukrainian refugee, housed on a ship docked at the Port of Leith, and a colleague’s nine visiting horticultural students from Tamil Nadu. Such are the unexpected things that happen here. The Permaculture Association has been there from the get-go. I met with Andy Goldring on a wet November evening in Photo © Andrew Waterhouse centre with various climbers. To my right, there’s a tool shed with water-harvesting, and ahead, under the library wall we’ve re-wilded a previously miserable strip of land, with indigenous seed packs and trees from the Woodland Trust. There are also two composters made from pallets, a water tap and a small creek-shaped pond. What’s been delightful this past year is that the derelict spaces we took over five years ago are now showing signs of considerable biodiversity. Insects abound, birds swoop by, butterflies frolic. A few months ago, a blue-tailed damsel fly attached itself to a student’s smock; edible and medicinal plants left to seed have self-propagated and pop-up in pavement cracks and annual beds. Last week the garden was awarded a ‘thriving’ certificate by Keep Scotland Beautiful. Deacon Brodies pub on Edinburgh’s Hight Street in late 2015 and from there the well has sprung. Graham Bell was the thread that ran through the whole thing. I did my PDC with him after 20 years of applying the wisdoms gleaned from his Permaculture Garden book purchased in the mid-1990s on the advice of an old friend who’d learned of permaculture from a stall at Glastonbury Festival. I’ve always felt that Graham’s view stretched back through time to the heart of this Isle’s many practical, poetic dissenters, to struggle, romance, ingenuity and wonder. In research terms the Computing within Limits community have been invaluable comrades and a source of strength when the going gets tough. Trying to bring people from all walks of life together, we’ve run public engagement events. In 2021 Hasten Slowly 6  | www.permaculture.co.uk
page 9
a b o v e   Kitchen allotment l e f t t o r i g h t Climate Fringe Open Day Event Student volunteer Leeloo Moreau after filling the green roof Planting an orchard at Craiglockhart Campus and last year an Open Day as part of Climate Fringe and My Big Green Community – both well attended and received, involving talks, campus grown food and drink, live music, DJs, student exhibits, holistic therapy, garden tours and just hanging out together on the same raft. I’m running a workshop at CILIP Scotland’s Green Libraries Gathering, and in collaboration with the Perma­culture Education Working Group, we’re developing permaculture as a higher education subject. Last September I was at the Educator’s Gathering to garner ideas for a permaculture module. In wintertime the university’s Interaction Design Group are seeking to create digital installations to brighten the garden spaces over the dark months. Somehow I hope to find time to do my Permaculture Design Diploma. issue 119 sp r i ng 2024 More on community gardens: ‘ The Mandala Community Forest Garden’ (PM118) ‘ The Unstoppable Transition Town!’ (PM117) Callum Egan works as a Research Technician at Edinburgh Napier University in the School of Computing, Engineering and Built Environment. He researches, designs, writes, teaches, gardens, strums and sings. His passions involve advocating for nature and climate justice, and unravelling a lifelong love of the arts and science. https://blogs.napier.ac.uk/thelionsgate |  7

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I’ve taken myself round to the kitchen part of the garden, on the other side of the library, situated beneath a sevenstory concrete tower of classrooms and offices, hemmed in, on all sides. I’m sat at a bench and table in the allotment area. In front of me a brick library building with one thin window and a desk and seat positioned sympathetically inside. To my right an imposing Stalinist fire escape, crying out for an imaginative intervention; to my left the back door of the kitchens, maybe 20 food metres away. Here we’ve erected a polytunnel. This morning I could barely get in as runaway nasturtiums had claimed the doorway. Inside we have power and data feeds and are growing spinach, tomatoes, celery, rocket, radishes, sunflowers and potatoes. We have a dwarf peach tree that always seems to fruit. We store a pizza oven and tea urn in here and with students are developing a sensor system to control and monitor the growing conditions.

Surrounding me are 15 raised timber beds. This season, overflowing with five varieties of potato. We’re also growing beetroot, carrots, coriander, raspberries, onions, garlic, and a multitude of herbs. There is a tyre stack of rhubarb and another one with a huge flowering sage. A one metre square bed is dedicated to exploring the layers of a food forest in miniature. Some of the other beds have fruit trees in their

Academic Community Looking back to the beginnings of this permaculture-inspired techno gardens (lab)itat, I see I was lucky to have sympathetic gate-keepers in the School of Computing, Engineering and Built Environment who supported its aims academically (what might regenerative computing look like?); and in Properties and Facilities who provided funding to get it off the ground – the Director of Estates at the time had been involved in a hospital greening project and knew the benefits that green urban spaces have on health and wellbeing.

A great many people have contributed to this unrelenting vision of a healthier, nature-focused form of educational workplace. Hundreds of student projects have wrestled with what happens to design when you put permaculture in the centre of your thinking. Colleagues have volunteered their time to maintain the spaces and help at events, and volunteers from the local community and beyond have provided much needed support throughout: most recently a Ukrainian refugee, housed on a ship docked at the Port of Leith, and a colleague’s nine visiting horticultural students from Tamil Nadu. Such are the unexpected things that happen here.

The Permaculture Association has been there from the get-go. I met with Andy Goldring on a wet November evening in

Photo © Andrew Waterhouse centre with various climbers. To my right, there’s a tool shed with water-harvesting, and ahead, under the library wall we’ve re-wilded a previously miserable strip of land, with indigenous seed packs and trees from the Woodland Trust. There are also two composters made from pallets, a water tap and a small creek-shaped pond.

What’s been delightful this past year is that the derelict spaces we took over five years ago are now showing signs of considerable biodiversity. Insects abound, birds swoop by, butterflies frolic. A few months ago, a blue-tailed damsel fly attached itself to a student’s smock; edible and medicinal plants left to seed have self-propagated and pop-up in pavement cracks and annual beds.

Last week the garden was awarded a ‘thriving’ certificate by Keep Scotland Beautiful.

Deacon Brodies pub on Edinburgh’s Hight Street in late 2015 and from there the well has sprung. Graham Bell was the thread that ran through the whole thing. I did my PDC with him after 20 years of applying the wisdoms gleaned from his Permaculture Garden book purchased in the mid-1990s on the advice of an old friend who’d learned of permaculture from a stall at Glastonbury Festival. I’ve always felt that Graham’s view stretched back through time to the heart of this Isle’s many practical, poetic dissenters, to struggle, romance, ingenuity and wonder.

In research terms the Computing within Limits community have been invaluable comrades and a source of strength when the going gets tough.

Trying to bring people from all walks of life together, we’ve run public engagement events. In 2021 Hasten Slowly

6  |

www.permaculture.co.uk

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