Details of Meeting held on 10 October 2013

President Iain Fairbairn welcomed Assistant Governor Lindsay Craig to the Rotary Club of South Queensferry on Thursday 10th October.

The speaker was Ben Dell from the Edible Gardening Project at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Based in a vegetable garden and orchard area of the Botanics, the project trains local people and volunteers in gardening skills; provides a programme of gardening events; supports other gardening education schemes in Edinburgh and runs workshops for groups as diverse as young mothers, senior citizens and pupils from special schools. As well as learning gardening in the project's beds and polytunnel, there is the Field Kitchen, where gardeners can taste the result of their labours and find out about the benefit of vegetables in their diet. Ben is currently establishing a time line of Scottish apples, where visitors will be able to see an avenue of trees reaching from the oldest known varieties to the newest. Another project involves planting wild vegetables such as cabbage next to domestic and commercial varieties. The results are sent to the Rowat Institute for nutritional evaluation.  An interesting historic link will be formed when the Gardener's Cottage from the original Botanic Gardens at Shrubhill is re-erected in the Royal Botanic Gardens. It will form a base for the Edible Gardening Project, providing staff facilities and lecture rooms, thus continuing the tradition of teaching gardening skills in Edinburgh.

Ben's talk prompted many questions from the floor and the vote of thanks was proposed by vice President Charles Fletcher. 

More information can be found at 

http://stories.rbge.org.uk/edible-garden-project