Sustainable Urban Gardener returns to Glasgow

Well it has been a mighty long trip around these wonderful islands but I’ve finally arrived back where it all started. I began learning and loving gardening in the year Sinead O’Connor topped the charts with an unreleased Prince song. I learned my trade through the heady days of Brit Pop and just after the millennium bug failed to end the world as we knew it, I found myself in the south east of England helping to build an environmentally friendly landscape social enterprise.

I spent close to twenty years honing my environmental credentials and skills and focused my work on helping people, and urban wildlife share the same spaces. The culmination of this work was an award-winning community landscape project in west London that retro-fitted green roofs, green walls, rain gardens, wild flower meadows and food growing into residential areas to showcase ecologically sound systems that brought benefits such as, flood prevention, urban cooling, increased spaces for wildlife and much needed employment.

Now that I am back in Glasgow I would love to share my passion and experience for nature friendly gardens with the good people of my hometown. It has been an extraordinary and tough year and gardens have been a safe place for many people. Imagine if you and your children could safely share your garden with the wonderful urban wildlife that surrounds us, grow your own food and leave little impact on the wider world. It’s all possible and with a little guidance you could have a nature friendly paradise just outside your back door.

I fully realised it was an extraordinary year when I read an article this morning that was headlined: Deep Purple battling Taylor Swift for Number 1 on the official album chart.

It feels good to finally come home to Glasgow.