Plants and seeds bought via our Community Climate Action Fund success. It’s exciting to see our plans for edible/sensory/medicinal campuses come together. Over the last few weeks we’ve taken delivery of lots of herbs and seeds and soil and compost and water butts, and this week we take delivery of twenty fruit trees too! You … Continue reading
I’ve just been sent a pack of 100 seed-balls as part of the Keep Scotland Beautiful #BeeDiverse campaign. I’m sure we’d all agree that the rockery beneath John Napier’s tower would be a delightful sight covered in flowers and populated with bees and butterflies. Bee populations are in dramatic decline due to habitat loss – … Continue reading
It’s been an inspirational experience working with colleagues from ENSA, The Business School and the Development Office, dreaming-up how, moderate funding, from the Community Climate Asset Fund could be put to use at Napier. In the first place I was delighted to have been enthused by Clive Gee’s positive energy when he suggested, out of … Continue reading
I’ve been playing with data from our recent School of Computing survey into student attitudes to sustainability. The point of the survey was to gather evidence of how students feel about sustainability, as a precursor to organising focus groups that will investigate how we can embed sustainability methods and materials into computing modules, in the … Continue reading
A few years ago I made my way back to see Graham Bell at Garden Cottage (the oldest intentional food forest in the UK). I’d met Graham once before and made a film then too. You can view it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M1uMqRUabw Back in the 90’s I’d read his book The Permaculture Garden and had always … Continue reading
One the most positive things to have come out of the lockdown situation has been the ability to work your weekly hours in a manner that supports your health and well-being. That is, if you’re lucky enough to have a progressive employer, or a job at all. I’ve been getting up early, often in time … Continue reading
Professor Sally Smith (Head of Graduate Apprenticeships and Skills Development), MSc student Kris Plum, and I are currently involved in research about embedding sustainability in the university curriculum. We’ve developed a survey – ‘student attitudes to sustainability’ based on the excellent work from SEED (Sustainability and Environmental Education)*, responses to which will be synthesised into … Continue reading
Delighted that in collaboration with ENSA president Ankit Dougal and Clive Gee at the Edinburgh Napier Development office we’ve been awarded £2660 by the Community Climate Asset Fund ‘to help tackle climate change and deliver Scotland’s green recovery from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.’ £1000 of the funding comes to The Lions’ Gate at Merchiston for … Continue reading
Recently, The Lions’ Gate was part of the international 52 Climate Actions project funded by the VKRF. Our task was to design a deck of online cards, one for each week of the year, detailing a climate action anyone could understand, and many that anyone could achieve. On the surface the actions are accessible to … Continue reading
The Lions’ Gate is an in-development urban permaculture project based at Edinburgh Napier University’s Merchiston campus providing; garden, allotment, outdoor laboratory, venue and relaxation space for students, staff and local communities to explore solutions, in an applied sense, to environmental and social issues. Drop-in sessions are open to all on Mondays from 10am – 2pm. … Continue reading
