Present – Andy, Donald, Sam, Emma

Achievements

14 whisky barrels rolled out and being maintained by teams of active volunteers. Andy is keeping in touch, but they are generally self-sufficient. 

The Inch Nursery has donated much equipment, soil, plants and whisky barrels to get us set up and have been very supportive

Emma and team have installed new business planters on St John’s Road. Neilsons today. 

We have many people helping in the parks – mainly St Margaret’s. The planter in Union Park has been moved, and two new planters have been installed by the rugby club. 

The website has moved to a reduced-cost version and needs to be refreshed.

The planters for nursery children and P6’s will arrive in September. The school PTA and park are going halves. 

Other news

The council culture meeting went ahead without a motion from our councillors, as they think they have a better way of helping us. We need permission to install planters.  

The visitor levy papers show that there will be a focus on the city centre initially, and floral gateways were not mentioned.

Things to be discussed

We have 70 volunteers – how should we keep them engaged – a series of events across all the parks that is more than just tidying. Social type meetings with wreath making or such. Let’s create a fairy trail garden and get people involved. A Halloween trail could be done. There is room availability at Drumbrae for getting people together. We could do an update on what we have done? 

There are planting phases, bulbs, etc coming up. Should we advertise each park’s activities to get folk turning up? What else around parks and seasonal changes? Each park should advertise bulb planting, and we publicise that to get people into the parks. 

Kirkliston has 47 planters on the street – the council gave permission for none. What is our appetite for following their example? The issue here is we only have insurance for council-approved planters. We would need to formalise our arrangements and take out public liability insurance at £8 a month. We agreed we wanted to make progress, take out public liability insurance, formalise arrangements with a constitution and start a bank account. The original plan does not work as we can not get engagement from the council on siting planters. 

Bloom bikes? We could spray paint old bikes and add plant pots to them, placing them at bike racks across Corstorphine. Some are little used. Would we get permission? This was thought to be a good idea and the Bike Station may have some we could use. Perhaps get a local school to do the bikes? 

The Corstorphine Women’s Institute has been in touch. Janice at the inch nursery and said we could install window planters at stone planters – should we go ahead with this? The remedial action on the stone planters is not scheduled. Yes. 

Grant application – we applied for £4500 to ECCAN, and St Margaret’s Park treasurers have said they are prepared to hold it in a sub-account should we be successful. We expected to hear by now, and the charity now says the end of the month. We heard that they will not fund the full amount. A discussion needs to take place on the climate parts of our work. 

Businesses who want planters – what’s next? Emma is in touch with many, and we can proceed with that on St John’s Road. 

Hanging baskets – what should we do about this? We have three companies and Andy to put on the website.