One-Hour-Only Gardening with Incredible Edible Stranraer

Each week, Incredible Edible Stranraer host a one-hour-only volunteering session, where community members can come along and give just an hour of their time to improving the place they call home.

 

You can get a surprising amount done in an hour. As the old saying goes; many hands make light work! Sometimes a seemingly simple idea can really open the doors to more people getting involved with community gardening. Incredible Edible Stranraer’s ‘OHO’ volunteers have said that they’ve developed a much greater interest in their own gardens and growing things since starting the sessions. Here’s what Norval, from Incredible Edible Stranraer, had to say about one-hour-only gardening…

Where did the idea of 1-hour gardening come from?

The idea came about through speaking to passers-by while our group were volunteering in the Gardens of Friendship or the various beds around Stranraer. People would say ‘I wish I had the time to get involved’ and I’d say ‘can you spare an hour?’ Our group was mostly made up of retired ladies who had time to commit to our group and it was difficult to get younger, working age people to join us.

What are the benefits of limiting a gardening slot to one-hour?

We realised that people were reluctant to volunteer in case they got sucked into committees and became overwhelmed or over involved. So we set up our one hour only sessions – people aren’t committing to anything, they simply turn up, do their hour and that’s it. Our OHO volunteers speak of the satisfaction of doing something positive for the community, getting out in the fresh air after a busy day at work and the differences they can make in an hour.