The Knowe Garden Centre

Auchinleck Community Development Initiative, located in the former coalfield area of East Ayrshire, we aim to protect and enhance the environmental, historical and social fabric of the town of Auchinleck.

ACDI strive to make Auchinleck a good place to live. We have redeveloped and currently maintain a previously unused and vacant brownfield land space in the heart of the village. It is now a fully functional Community Growing Resource Garden for the use of all residents. This has encouraged pride of place, outdoor learning, skills development, employment, volunteering and the fostering of partnerships between community groups, local schools and like-minded organisations.

We have a social enterprise within our garden with six commercial greenhouses on site. We have employed over 300 disadvantaged young people over the years. During 2022/23 we secured funding to employ long term unemployed adults .Some had been unemployed for over 25 years, several have disablities. This was very successful and Jobcentre staff have commented in the noticeable change to confidence and motivation to find work .We have retained two of these individuals in work with us. We have trained them in horticulture and gardening, enabling them to progress into sustainable employment. We grow and sell summer bedding plants, vegetables and hanging baskets. We have several designated garden spaces around the 2.5 acre site. Sensory, herb, hosta, heuchera, butterfly and poison gardens have been developed. We also have a pond, bug hotel, fairy garden and living den. We encourage wildlife, bees and butterflies with a wild untouched secluded areas to enable them to flourish in.

During 2022 We applied for and received funding of £250 from Action Earth to launch a 'feed the birds' project within our garden . We installed 4 bird feeding stations, a bird table and nesting boxes . We have noticed the number of birds feeding at our stations increasing over the months since installation. It was slow to start, but now we need to regularly top up the bird feed . We anticipate this will boost number of birds surviving the winter and increase our bird population within our garden this summer.

We have also secured £2,000 Community benefit funding to tarmac the road between our greenhouses to enable people with mobility issues or disabilities wheelchairs etc to access our greenhouses

We have regular visits from local schools and nurseries and we also deliver plant science classes. We have various musical and other community events that are held in our garden. We are engaged in Adopt a Station with Scotrail and adopt Auchinleck and New Cumnock Stations.