Our Garden and Commons are at the heart of Making Just Futures. They’re not just spaces – they’re part of our community model and where we work together on common tasks that reveal our common humanity. Here daily practical sessions happen, along with seasonal workshops, shared meals, and quiet moments. In this shared space is also where we practise unlearning individualism and turn towards interdependence and collective responsibility, with/for each other as well as the land. We grow food, skills, and the resilience that helps us survive and thrive together.

A well‑loved space for hands and hearts

The garden is well established and well loved. Tucked within GalGael’s sprawling premises, it offers room for a moment’s quiet, a chat over a cuppa, or a chance to get your hands in the soil. Our polytunnel and greenhouse mean we can grow more of what ends up in our kitchen and on our tables: a diversity of greens in the cooler months and hot crops like tomatoes, cucumbers and winter squash from spring through to autumn.

Herbs become teas or find their way into balm‑making workshops. Flowers bring colour to our gatherings and give pollinators a reason to stay. Everything is connected. 

The Snug, the pond, and the Govan Dozen

Volunteers built our Snug – a small, warm space perfect for discussion‑based sessions, weekly meditation, or one‑to‑one conversations. Right next to it, the same hands designed and built a large pond. The addition of the pond serves two purposes: catching floodwater and improving biodiversity. That’s the kind of practical, hands-on, interconnectedness we strive for.

At the garden’s heart stands the Govan Dozen – a timber henge of 13 posts, each painted to honour a native and significant plant of Scotland. A reminder that place, memory, and growing are woven together.

The Ibrox Commons: shared ground, shared knowledge

The Commons is for our wider community and local growers. We provide and maintain raised beds – not as a service, but as an invitation. An invitation to meet neighbours, to learn from each other, and to grow food together. We also host communal evening growing sessions to give out seeds and seedlings, and knowledge is exchanged. Everyone is a teacher and a learner.

The Commons also lets us explore other parts of Making Just Futures: climate change, food insecurity, heritage plants, and traditional crafts.

• Basket willow – recently planted in preparation for future work.

• A live willow boundary wall – where we can learn the craft (and dance) of ‘stripping the willow’.

• A dry stane wall circle – open to all who need a place to sit and breathe.

Facing climate and food insecurity

In the face of a changing climate and rising food insecurity, we’ve planted 10 nut trees. They will help us make the most of the space we have, and grow more of the nutrients we need. After researching what grows best in Glasgow’s weather, we chose a mix of cobnut trees – relative of the hazelnut. Looking after them means coppicing older branches to boost new growth – another heritage skill we will learn together and share. We are curious, constantly learning and growing.

Year-round cultivation and living soil

Our outdoor areas are cultivated year-round. We grow a diverse array of crops chosen and nurtured by our community, and we learn about the wildflowers that share the space and help us attract the biodiversity that we need to produce food. We focus on building soil structure and life using as much organic matter as we can source on site. Our kitchen and the cycle of plant material in the garden produces rich fertility in the form of compost and we use this to mulch the garden beds. In autumn, we sow green manures that help keep the soil covered and feed the overwintering soil life. 

Over a year, our garden programme hosts nearly 100 sessions, engaging a dedicated community of around 80 participants and volunteers, contributing roughly 700 attendances in total. Peaks come in spring and summer, but a committed core keeps the garden alive through winter. That repeated, hands-on engagement tells us something simple and powerful: people are building a deep, sustained connection to the land, to each other, and to this community. Together we have, and are, enough.

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Visit the blog about the establishment of the GalGael Garden and Ibrox Commons. Here you will also find a link to a report by Dandelion about their work with us.