Jock Tamson’s Gairden

Almost nine years ago, give or take a month or so, I made a cup of coffee and sat myself down on a shoogly bench perched atop a pile of discarded subsoil. My view was both marvellous and terrifying. I was looking across a beautiful loch with the Braids and Pentlands beyond, Bawsinch nature reserve all teaming with avian life and fringed with the bare trees of January. Between me and this bucolic paradise lay a four acre field, and my brand new hob – Project Worker for Duddingston Kirk Glebe. I saw the job advertised not so long after being made redundant and charged at the post like it was the career opportunity that I’d been waiting for all my life.

A Glebe? A what-now? Unless you have lived in Scotland for a long time, or are an avid reader of the Sunday Post, you’re not likely to be familiar with the term. A Glebe was the piece of land given to the parish minister to subsidise his income by farming, if situated rurally, or perhaps a field to keep his horses in. Nowadays most Glebe land has been rented out for agricutulre or sold off for housing; there’s hardly a town in the nation that doesn’t have a Glebe Place, or Avenue. Now that you’ve equipped with that fact, you’ll start to notice them wherever you go. In fact, Scotland’s ost famous cartoon family – the Broons – reside at number 10 Glebe Street.

Over the years Duddingston Glebe has been used for many purposesL a bleaching green, a backdrop for Walter Scoot when he began writing The Heart of Midlothian, a good view for Joseph Turner, the road to the curling when the loch still froze over and laterally, a wildflower meadow to provide insects to feed the birds at Bawsinch. Duddingston’s Kirk wanted to make good use of their land and came up with the idea of making a biblical garden, but after making a thorough study of the scriptures came up with no accurate horticultural guide. A steering group looked again at the gardens of the bible and saw that the places described there, e.g. Eden, Gethsemane were much more remarkable for how people encountered God there. The plan then was to make the Glebe into a Garden of places, places where people could meet God – an outdoor cathedral. Joint funding from the parish and from the GoFor It Project was secured.

So there I was, clutching my coffee and looking out over four beautiful acres of man-high weeds (that’s what happens to an untended wildflower meadow, just saying’). Where to begin? I didn’t even have a spade, not to mention even a modest garden shed. I did have an excellent neighbour – Claudia who was the Gardener at Dr Neil’s – she kindly donated my very first volunteer, and we got to work.

Nine years on the man-high weeds still thrive, although they

are largely confined to the loch margins of the site to provide habitat for the native wildlife. We now have six garden buildings, three polytunnels, several beehives, two greenhouses and a whole shed-full of tools. We have expanded the growing areas all across the fild and produce a wide-range of vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers. We run a produce stall during the summer season which provides a source of locally grown food for the local community.

Stroll through the place at the height of summer and you’ll see a beautiful, thriving garden full of healthy produce. We work the land using organic principles: we use companion planting, not pesticides, we make our own compost, and endeavour to maintain good soil health by minimising cultivation.

There’s a growing network of paths to help people access the Gairden and lots of nice places to sit so that they can enjoy it.

The most important thing about the Gairden, however, is the people. We have 35 volunteers ranging in age from 18 to 76 who work with us over three days a week, and we employ four members of staff. We welcome everyone but particularly support people with mental health problems, learning difficulties, neurodiversity, those seeking employability skills, those suffering bereavement, poverty, and social isolation.

Our community is bound together by the demanding common task of working the Gairden but also by the conversations that happen while we do that. In an average day the chat between us can vary between the deepest and most desperate times in our lives to the most daft and trivial. We always make sure that the whole team is rounded up for tea break – lots of home-baking and wildly ranging blethers – religion, sex, politics – nothing is off the agenda; opinions vary wildly and it’s all mostly good-natured. When we do fall out, it’s more likely to be over a difference of opinion over putting the wrong stuff in the compost heap or how often the grass should be cut.

Duddingston Kirk, in particular Rev Jim Jack, supported the work of the

Glebe Project for the first five years then helped and encouraged us to form an independent trust which emerged out of the first lockdown. On the 1st of September 2020 we gained charitable status by complete coincidence on the birthday of the Rev John Thomson who was the parish minister in the early 1800s. Thomson in addition to being a compassionate paster was also a noted landscape painter and father of eleven children. John (or Jock as he would’ve been called as a child in his native Ayrshire) used to call his congregation his ‘bairns’. This may have been the origin of the well-loved Scottish expression “We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns”. Then again, it might not have been as towns in Fife, the Borders and Angus all claim their Jock as the original. However, we claimed the title as our new name and continue to work in that egalitarian spirit.

If you’ve never been to Duddingston, then I can assure you that it’s worth a visit. The Kirk itself, in its 900th year, is an architectural and historical lesson in itself; the Sheep Heid pub is the oldest in Scotland having played host to both Bonnie Prince Charlie and the late Queen; there’s the gorgeous Doctor Neil’s Garden – a horticultural gem, and of course the beautiful Duddingston Loch where the Rev Robert Walker skated and was immortalised by Raeburn. If you do get round Arther’s Seat, do come and say hellow to us at the Gairden – we’ll make you a cuppa and show you round.

Lizz Spence