The formal garden has been a riot of colour this year as usual thanks to the Uddingston Pride volunteers. The lawns etc. are looked after by our professional Gardener but there was a corner, rather neglected and unloved which has been worked on by socially distanced church folk, during the restrictions which is already coming to life, thanks to those who helped with the initial tidy up. Whilst working in the garden passers by have taken an interest in the small changes we have made and offered to help.

It was obvious that a number of people enjoy their ice cream in the garden and that a minority of dog walkers disregard others safety however most people enjoy and value the quiet space as they cut through from the old police station side to Castle Avenue.

The aim is to encourage wildlife to the garden and we have posted a list of birds spotted. There is a beautiful long haired cat who comes to say hello most days. Last week we met a hedgehog, suggested names so far - Prickles, Heggy, Hodge. There is a hedgehog visiting a garden near Muiredge school, seemingly they can travel 2 miles per day, could it be the same one! Should we ‘log the hog’?

We have planted many shade loving plants and bulbs and created a mound which we will seed with wildflowers in Spring to encourage pollinators . We’ve a few snowball turnips to harvest and hopefully some potatoes. A water butt has been fashioned from one of the old wheelie bins on site and we are aiming to be as Eco friendly as possible in the future.

We hope that many more people will visit the garden, we plan to note all the plants in the garden so that we can look for them coming up next year, hopefully the snowdrops planted in the green last year have increased. For now, we are not cutting back and weeding will be selective, again to encourage insects and birds. More bird feeders will go up over the coming weeks.