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Edinburgh Allotment Sites

General Allotment Links

  • Scottish Allotments & Gardens Society is a useful source of information regarding news about allotments in Scotland. It also lists the legislation pertaining to allotments, both in Scotland and the UK. If you think your site may be under threat from developers you should get in touch with SAGS immediately.
  • The National Society of Allotments and Gardens represents allotments for the whole of the UK. It links to lots of individual sites, so you can find out what plotholders across Britain are up to (building sheds and drinking tea, mainly).
  • Allotments UK - Allotments UK and other related allotment links.

  • The North Kelvin Meadow Campaign - Excellent website by the community that is creating a vibrant growing space in north Glasgow. Visit and sign the petition. This is the most important allotment campaign in Scotland. It must be supported and must be successful!
  • Bridgend Growing Communities - Based at Bridgend Allotments, this organisation's goal is to use community food growing as a catalyst for changing lives. The belief is that community growing can be used to build communities and to increase opportunities for the people who live in the area.

Gardening Resources

  • Garden Organic for those interested in organic gardening. The Website is excellent, a source of information and inspiration. Previously known as the Henry Doubleday Research Association.
  • The Soil Association has loads of news and information about issues concerning organic gardeners and farmers.
  • Permaculture is an approach that encourages us to organise our gardens (and our lives) to work with nature.
  • Greenweb is a website containing articles on gardening.
  • The National Vegetable Society is a useful organisation to know about. They produce a quarterly bulletin, which FEDAGA receives and passes on to site reps from time to time.
  • Royal Horticultural Society Need to know the difference between your cynara cardunculus and your cynara scolymus? Look no further. You have access to a huge database of horticultural information here: fruit and vegetables as well as flowers.
  • BBC gardening The ideal site for browsing around on a rainy day - there's lots of information, it's well presented and easy to follow.
  • Thrive is a charity that promotes gardening and gardening projects to specific groups - mainly disabled, disadvantaged or older people - as a way of making positive changes to their lives.
  • Crocus This is a fantastic Website. Although it's a commercial site (Crocus is a garden-centre chain), there is a huge amount of information- worth adding to your list of favourites.
  • The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is always worth a visit, and the website is a rich resource with news of exhibitions, events and courses.
  • The Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society - the Caley - is another useful site for the horticulturalist.
  • Edinburgh Grow Your Own have set up this Freegle exchange site especially for garden and allotment related items. You can source what you want and also get rid of unwanted stuff if there's someone else looking for it. Perfect.
  • The Vegetable Gardeners Almanac is a program to plan, record and manage everything in your garden/allotment/croft.
  • Seedy People - a new seed exchange scheme has just been started. Save money! Grow more! Make new friends!
  • Plants for a Future - a great site with a massive database of plants and their uses.
  • Blightwatch is a free service to alert subscribers to the presence of Potato Blight in their postcode area. It is supported by the British Potato Council and industry sponsors. Sign up and be prepared. You don't want to lose that precious tattie crop.
  • Suntrap is a beautiful garden on the west of Edinburgh dedicated to lifelong learning. It is owned by the National Trust for Scotland, administered by Oatridge College and well worth a visit and your support. Here is an interesting blog which also contains some good photographs.
  • Greener Leith is an active "grassroots" organisation lobbying for environmental improvements in Leith. Well worth a visit.
  • Edinburgh Garden Partners develop and support relationships between people needing help with their gardens with caring volunteer gardeners who have the desire to grow their own food and who have no space to do so. They focus support upon older and disabled individuals where gardeners take on a befriending role and help them to remain independent in their own homes by sharing their interests in gardening and getting out there in the local community.
  • The Garden Museum may be in London, but the website is here. It celebrates the design, history and art of gardens.
  • Garden Solutions is your local supplier of compost, manure, mulch and other such stuff. Larger orders will attract a discount.
  • Fresh Pod have an interesting product that may be of use. Here's what they have to say: "With the summer growing season in full swing, we hope that your allotments are bursting with fresh produce. However, as you know, a plot brimming with seasonal produce comes with its own problems as you struggle to eat, or give your way through the mountains of soft fruit, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes and lettuces which appear at this time of year. Thankfully this is a problem we can help you solve, without seeing any of your hard graft over the year, rot away and end up in the bin.

    "As you may or may not know, all fresh produce gives off a gas called ethylene, which is the driving agent in the ripening and ultimately rotting, process. By removing the ethylene from the environment in which fresh produce is stored, you can dramatically increase the usable life of your produce. It is here that Fresh Pod comes in.

    "Fresh Pod is a revolutionary 100% safe and natural product which utilises a natural material to oxidise ethylene in fresh produce storage areas, in much the same way that plants oxidise CO2 in the atmosphere. 100% non-toxic and recyclable, Fresh Pod can prolong the life of your fruit, veg and fresh cut flowers for up to four times as long as they would otherwise last, and can keep soft fruit in prime condition for around 6-8 weeks. Also, once your sachet has fought this noble battle for 6 months, it makes an excellent natural fertiliser if sprinkled back onto your allotment.

    "As a company who are passionate about the environment, fresh produce and eliminating food waste, we would like to recognise the valuable contribution that you make towards these ideals by offering you 25% off a year’s supply of Fresh Pod. Just quote ALOT when ordering from www.freshpod.co.uk or when calling 08456 345 185 to get your discount."

Newspaper Gardening Pages

  • The Daily Telegraph
  • The Guardian

    Norman's Old Shed and Bruno's Allotment Blog

  • Norman Taylor is a partially-sighted photographer in Gatehouse-of-Fleet. This is his website.
  • Readers' Sheds caters for all things shed. Worth a look. If you like sheds.
  • Bruno's Allotment Blog proves that allotments are pretty universal. At least, what goes on in London seems to be pretty representative of Edinburgh too. Well written and worthy of your attention.

    • Green Walking Tours in and around Edinburgh

  • Green Yonder Tours is an Edinburgh-based company, offering walking tours that bring you closer to people and places you'd be unlikely to encounter otherwise, all on a green theme.
    The idea is to see Edinburgh in a Green Light. It's not just gardens either. The programme covers a wide range of green tours, all with the same mission to give you an experience that's local, knowledgeable, friendly, and respectful to the communities visited.

    • Imagine that you are walking through a forest...

    The sun lights the many glades and birds fill the branches with movement and song. Suddenly, you notice something unusual. All the trees are food trees. Traditional fruits like plum and cherry mix with more unusual ones. There are hazels laden with nuts and a willow-leaved buckthorn. Newly alert, your eye travels down to the shrub layer: currants of every colour; fat, juicy raspberries; the ground is carpeted with pignut, wild garlic and wood violet, the glades are bright with day lilies and bellflowers. A scent of mushrooms hangs in the air. It dawns on you: you are in a forest garden.
    Forest gardens are productive systems with the structure of a forest. In Scotland, the most promising version mimics the forest edge rather than deep forest. There is little previous research and less plant-breeding effort devoted to forest gardening, but this also makes it exciting, like the start of a whole new method of agriculture.

  • Reforesting Scotland is a networking organisation that encompasses a diverse membership from academics and researchers in national institutions through owners of small business, crafts people and others such as ourselves. Visit their impressive website.

    • Alan's Forest Garden Allotment Blog

    Here's an fascinating, useful, and beautiful blog detailing the creation of a forest garden on an allotment in Aberdeen. Plenty of food for thought...

  • Of Plums and Pignuts shows what's possible in northeast Scotland. If Alan can do it there, there's no excuse for us!


    • If you have a favourite garden Website that you think should be included here, please send the details and we'll add it to the list.