Seed Planting Session

A big thank you to the children of Braehead Primary who visited our library on Monday and helped us out by planting sunflower seeds for the Secret Garden.

We planted our first batch of seeds collected from last year’s massive sunflowers and hope to have the same success this year. With more classes coming to visit next week, we may end up with an even bigger crop.

We still have plenty of seeds left so if you would like to give it a go yourself, please feel free to select some from the seed library at the desk.

Lucky Birds

The local birds will be flocking to the garden with these latest additions kindly donated by the FV Men’s Shed. These beautiful metal holders which are doubling as Sunflower supports will provide water and seeds for our feathery friends. We have topped them up with seeds from the sunflowers to see if we have any takers. Thank you FV Men’s Shed

Special Delivery

On Monday we were delighted to receive these beautiful hand crafted pieces from the Forth Valley Men’s Shed. We commissioned these pieces with the remainder of our Cilips funding.

We are looking forward to some storytelling sessions out in the garden.

Thank you very much to Kenny and his team.

Kate McLelland Illustrator Workshop

As part of Stirling Libraries Off the Page festival, the library hosted an art workshop with the wonderful Author and Illustrator Kate McLelland. The sold-out workshop was aimed at children aged 6-9 with ticket sales going to the Mayfield Secret Garden. The theme of the event was Scottish Wildlife and the children contributed to a collaborative mural. Participants took home some of Kate’s artwork as well as their new drawings and a Friends of the Mayfield pin badge.

Writers in the Garden

The library is proud to host Write Club, a friendly weekly meeting for people interested in writing and sharing their work. The group meets on a Thursday between 5.30 pm-7 pm.

Recently the group were joined by author Tom Newlands who is originally from the area and took inspiration from his upbringing in St Ninians for his debut novel Only Here, Only Now. Tom spoke to the group about his experience of getting published and gave feedback on their writing.

The Write Club and Tom Newlands in the Mayfield Secret Garden

The group are working towards publishing a collection of their work. Watch this space!

Friends Get to Work

The group got together for a much needed prune and weed session. We cut back a lot of the briars to give some space to the beautiful Acer trees.

The next gardening session will take place on Tuesday 20th May during the next Friends of the Mayfield meeting.

Quickblock

Quickblock is a Scotland-based start-up dedicated to sustainability and very generously donated their blocks to help us with our project. The team from Quickblock came to the garden on 28th November 2024 and supported the Friends of the Mayfield group to build three raised beds and a bench in under half an hour.

A huge thank you to team Quickblock and Fiona Buchanan for the introduction.

Before

The inner courtyard space of the Mayfield Community Centre lay empty and unused (other than storing goalposts).

With support from CILIPS Green Library Fund, the idea to turn the space into a garden that could be used by the library and community centre libraries became a possibility.

Work begins in the garden

We contacted the Criminal Justice Team who offered the free labour of cutting back the unruly bramble bushes and laying a whin dust pathway to make the garden more accessible.

A rough plan