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Proposals for this project: Grow Your Own fund

Total budget £52,500

Only residents in the following areas can participate:

2024-09 Growing to Love- Herb planting hands 1.jpg

Tuk Tuk Grow and Go

2025-05-10  •  No comments  •  Edinburgh Community Food  •  Grow Your Own fund

Tuk Tuk Grow and Go is a mobile community food growing and cooking initiative for families in Edinburgh. Using our tuk tuk and soup bike, we’ll visit neighbourhoods, community spaces and schools to deliver hands-on educational sessions that make growing and healthy eating easy, fun and accessible. 

We’ll begin with short sessions that engage families in thinking about what they could grow at home – focusing on simple, low-maintenance options like herbs and easy to grow vegetables that work well in small spaces. We’ll explore what would be practical and enjoyable for each family, considering their needs, available space and interest. 

At each location, we’ll display examples of plants grown from seed and offer Growing Survival Kits – simple starter packs including compost, pots, seeds or seedlings, and easy-to-follow instructions. These kits will be tailored based on family feedback, supporting people to feel confident and capable of growing their own herbs and vegetables at home, all year round. 

Each session will also include a food component: hot soup or a dish using the same herbs or vegetables being promoted. We’ll serve this using our branded soup bike, and share easy, family-friendly recipe cards and optional take-home ingredient packs. 

To connect participants with wider growing opportunities, we’ll offer optional tuk tuk visits to nearby growing sites, creating positive experiences and potential new links for families. 

By bringing everything directly to communities, Tuk Tuk Grow and Go reduces participation barriers and makes food growing visible, social, and engaging. It encourages small but meaningful actions that support climate goals, health, and community resilience. 

£5,000

Edible Garden at The Action Group

2025-05-06  •  1 comment  •  Tiffany The Action Group  •  Grow Your Own fund

We would propose the following: •    The Green Thumbs (our clients) has approached us at The Action Group to set up a unconstituted /informal gardening group made up by our clients. The role of The Action Group is to provide assistance in facilitation and risk management, and we agree to be the parent company of this project.  •    The group would use our indoor courtyard space, that is privately accessed by The Action Group, that the group could access freely, with an emphasis on fresh produce (herbs, vegetables, fruits) to be grown safely there, away from public misuse or vandalism, to ensure it is safe to then share with this community. •    The group would then harvest the produce, and we could set up a publicly accessible stall in the land/garden that is publicly accessible currently. This is where people could take the fresh produce for a small donation or for free, with donations going towards the gardening groups endeavours or local charities within the community. •    For larger fruit trees we do have a public accessible spot that we would happily set up a orchard. We would put recycled signs up to encourage people to help themselves to the fruit. One client in particular has a vision of us making apple juices from trees that we hope to one day plant/be able to acquire!

Additional things we'd like to be able to achieve: o   One of our service groups in Falkirk are learning how to make planter boxes and basic woodwork skills from recycled goods and so we’d plan to incorporate their skills and recycled goods to aid this project further and to invite community volunteers to help us with this project.  o   Eventually we’d love to see our clients proudly sharing what they manage to do with the ingredients we harvest and sharing that information with our community. One idea that the clients have had is to make a recipe book based on what we cook from the fresh produce, to share with the communtiy.  o  We'd like to connect with Edinburgh College which is across the road from our centre, for them to share their skills in horticulture and gardening where possible, and potentially the cooking units. We'd also welcome any of the students to gain volunteer experience with us. 

£2,889