Behind Auchinlee Eventide Home

Auchinlee Eventide Home, High Askomil Road, Campbeltown PA28 6EN

An organic garden

A working organic garden and wildlife area with small walk and wildlife observation areas.

All day every day

As the garden is open at all times you may meet our gardeners, volunteers, or no-one but we have a plan of the garden you can pick up at the entrance.

Through Grants

Grants and generous donations enable us to buy seeds and cover running costs etc. At the moment we are all unpaid volunteers but are trying to employ a gardener which would provide more structure in the garden.

We have a donation box

We have a donation box in the Volunteer Centre 21 Long Row South, a letterbox at the garden entrance and a box in the resource centre if open.

Through adherence to the principles of natural, sustainable gardening.

Using no synthetic pesticides etc. and utilising natural, organic fertilizers, manure etc. we produce natural, sustainable, non-toxic fruit, vegetables and herbs while creating a healthy garden for ourselves and all our wildlife.

Acknowledging the importance of natures interaction within the garden and using this knowledge to the benefit of all (plants, wildlife and people).

Working with and using nature’s ways to create a sustainable method of gardening.

It’s just what it says on the tin, no manual disturbance of the soil.

The cultivation is done by the natural action of worms, soil based beasties and bacteria. You cover an area of soil with damp organic matter (cardboard, paper, compost, manure, hay, straw etc.).

This organic covering will cut out light, encouraging worms etc to rise into the fresh organic matter. This in turn helps the cycle of decomposition. This results in the addition of fresh organic nutrients becoming available to your plants.

On an established no-dig bed the same principle applies but be aware, cardboard and paper are slow to decompose and would be better reduced/shredded, mixed with greens (grass cuttings etc,) and used in your compost bin then, when composted, onto your no-dig beds.

This is a system of deeply cultivating a garden bed.

• Mark out the area of soil you want to cultivate
• Position a wheelbarrow at the end of the bed you are starting to dig
• Dig out the topsoil from the first row and put it into the barrow
• Place this topsoil at the end of the garden bed you are cultivating
• Using a garden fork loosen/break up the sub soil you have just uncovered by removing the topsoil
• Put compost/manure on top of the subsoil
• Dig out the second row’s topsoil and place it on top of the compost/manure in the previously dug row
• Carry on until the last row’s subsoil has been loosened and compost/manure has been added
• Place the topsoil taken from the first trench and place it onto the last trench’s subsoil and compost/manure
• You have now completed your double digging, have a break

It is usually a 3ft/1m wide bed (allowing easy access to all growing areas without standing on the soil) and as long as appropriate for your garden.

This bed is double dug. When the deep bed has been prepared it is never stood on keeping the soil structure open.

This open soil structure enables plants to send their roots straight down to their nutrients thereby reducing the space needed to mature.The open soil structure allows closer spacing of plants increasing yields fourfold. This close planting also creates a ‘mini-climate’ under which weeds find it difficult to thrive so weeding is no problem. Compost/manure is just forked into the top soil when needed.