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A new year update from Ruchill Golf Course
Hello, Kyle ([email protected]) here, I am maternity covering for Ebany as Food & Climate Action project coordinator for Glasgow Community Food Network. I’m excited for her and the baby, and also excited to make some great progress in Ruchill over the coming months. Check out some of Ebany’s work on this project from last year in these two blog posts:
A little about me
Speaking of babies, I was born in a neighbourhood called Tam O’ Shanter, just outside of Seattle, Washington. I’ve been in Europe for eight years now, and I spent the last four of those in London helping to build the organisation Energy Garden. My main role was supporting community groups to gain access to railway land and turn it into growing space. In that time, I made best friends with Network Rail, as well as smaller friendships with Transport for London, Arriva Rail, and some borough councils. Hopefully I can bring that experience to bear on the Ruchill project over the next few months. Anyway, enough about me, here's a little update on the golf course:
Permaculture designs are in!
Excitingly, we’ve received the final design vision for the market garden and surrounding space. We commissioned the work by James Chapman, a Scotland-based permaculture teacher and designer. Here’s the wider site map, showing the entire 48 acres (19.5 hectares) of the golf course.
Wider site map broken into habitat types. Credit: James Chapman
Site key showing current status -> planned improvement (over 20 years)
- A mature woodland -> stays the same
- B grassland with naturalisation -> community garden
- C grassland -> woodland
- C2 woodland -> stays the same
- D grassland -> nut orchard
- E woodland -> stays the same
- F grassland -> becomes willow woodland on short rotation coppice
- G scrub -> stays the same
- H grassland -> Public orchard with top fruit tree with apples, pears, etc
- I grassland -> market and community growing
- J scrub -> stays the same
- K scrub -> stays the same
- L grassland -> becomes willow on short rotation coppice
- M & N not included in project scope
Market garden design with community and commercial growing spaces. Credit: James Chapman
The total site shown is 7.5 acres/ 3 hectares. Some notes on what you’re looking at:
- Yellow is community growing space, including a building with a kitchen and indoor education space, a polytunnel, outdoor event space, compost loo, and open field growing.
- Blue shows commercial growing space, with up to six greenhouses and a keder greenhouse, a packing and food storage facility, staff building, compost loo, water retention and open field growing.
- The site will be fenced, with a 7-12m thick border of willow on short rotation coppice, which will provide facility because when cut, it can be chipped to create ramial woodchip, which can then be added to make a hot compost.
- There is a pond exclusively for wildlife toward the bottom of the site, and two water retention areas for emergency water supply which are fed by runoff from the greenhouses toward the top of the site.
These designs are a huge milestone for the project. They allow us to fully articulate our vision for the site and give us something to work towards. If you’d like to find out any more about the designs, we are happy to share in a lot more detail, just ask!
Side A: long shadow, icy grassland, distant hills
Side B: Icy tracks in the quad bike tracks on the course
Getting to know the course
I’ve been making regular trips to the course since it’s 20 minutes’ walk from my house. I visited twice during the recent cold snap and saw various finches, a huge buzzard, and a sparrowhawk, as well as uninhibited views of the snow-covered Campsie and Kilpatrick Hills and Ben Lomond. The course is part of a green corridor, connecting along the Forth & Clyde canal to Cadder Woods and Possil Marsh in the north; then to Ruchill Park, the canal and Claypits LNR to the south.
There is also a very cool hole, which leads to an old drover’s tunnel known locally as Halloween Pend, that takes you underneath the canal. I wouldn’t recommend it though as, on my recent visit, the mud was about six inches thick and very sticky.
The hole inspires curiosity. Would you enter?
Instead, you can walk to the other end of the course and cross the canal via Stockingfield Bridge. No matter how you navigate, the golf course is a special place full of surprises. We are hopeful that through our efforts we can formalise access, and work alongside the community to build safe and accessible pathways, improve the existing habitat and grow some healthy, affordable food.
Join the Ruchill Golf Course Resident Advisory Group (RAG)
So, let’s share some tea and biscuits and figure out how to crack this thing together! We need lots of enthusiastic people to help drive the project forward. The next meeting is Thursday, 13 Feb, from 18:00-20:00, and every subsequent second Thursday of the month.
If you’d like to join the RAG, just let me know by emailing me at [email protected] and I’ll add you to a separate mailing list where I send meeting reminders and minutes. Please help spread the word to anyone you think might be interested. And let me say a massive thank you to everyone who has been involved so far. See you out there!
