Green Gown Awards 2021: Student Engagement - Glasgow Kelvin College - Finalist

East End Community Garden Project

Glasgow Kelvin College has designed and built a college community garden at its East End Campus. The aim of the Garden is to provide an inspiring space that can help to deliver exciting, interactive outdoor learning experiences for learners; provide benefits for the health and wellbeing of the College and local community; and help to improve the College’s awareness of and relationship with the surrounding natural environment.

The Garden design centres on issues concerning both social and environmental sustainability. These include reducing the environmental impact of any intervention and protecting the existing ecosystem; requiring low maintenance and is resilient to current and future climate change effects; ensuring the College community have the potential to gain and develop new skills. It is intended that the Garden will benefit students and the local community by providing learning and development opportunities. It will also provide a welcome area to relax and enjoy the wonders of nature.

Top 3 learnings:

1. Derelict wasteland can be re-purposed into a vibrant, useable social/learning space for students/ stakeholders.
2. We have learned to use nature to further support mental health and well-being.
3. We recognised that transformation was built through a symbiotic relationship of College, Community and Business.

Videos

• Video #1 (click to hide)