Why we love Greenbank Garden

Transcript

10 speakers: Andrew; Ailsa; Nathan; 7 visitors

[Andrew]
My name is Andrew Hinson.
I am the head gardener of Greenbank Garden at the National Trust for Scotland.
I have the brilliant job of looking after this 2-acre walled garden and 1.5-acre woodland, plus 2 acres of wildflower meadows.
I'm here with three other gardeners, and we currently work with 40 volunteers a week to make sure that this garden is looking fantastic for any visitors that want to come.

Greenbank essentially is a demonstration garden of garden styles.
We have 12 different rooms and different horticultural designs for people to come and view, and the idea is showing off different plants and plantings that people can use in their own garden.

Something that I am really passionate about is eco-gardening.
Since I've arrived on site, we've not used any pesticides; two new beehives have been set up; we've got new bird boxes in the woodland; our weed control is from electric weed burners; we've got a new wormery doing more composting; we use battery-powered tools -- everything we can to make sure that the garden is looked after without damaging the environment that we're working in.

Here at Greenbank Garden we have a lovely café that visitors like to come and sit in within our cobbled courtyard.
And we're surrounded by one of the most urban environments in the whole of Scotland, so we welcome families, friends, grandparents, everyone to come along and enjoy the garden together because we want memories of the garden to be with the children and the future of this area.
One of the main reasons that I love Greenbank is there's such a sense of local community that I've definitely felt ever since arriving here.
The volunteers and even the visitors that come are so passionate about this property and wanting it to do well. It's been very welcoming having all of that energy surrounding me as I try and restore the garden back to its former glory after COVID's overgrowth that we had.

[Ailsa]
I'm Ailsa and I'm a seasonal gardener at Greenbank Garden.
I love Greenbank because it's a really beautiful garden.
The people are really wonderful. The different rooms that we have in the garden allows for different arrangements of flowers, so things like the witch garden at the moment has ornamental grasses in it, which are looking really nice.
The summer garden is looking really good at the moment; we've got wildflowers, it's really pretty. We've got sweet peas and cornflowers and things in there. I just like the variety of the garden -- it's really pretty.

[Visitor 1]
This is the first time that we've been here and it's amazing! It's so nice, it's so relaxing.
You've got loads of flowers. I love all the little different gardens that you've got and the waterfalls, and the kids have absolutely loved going around as well.
The café is nice -- if you want a wee coffee, you can sit and have a nice relax in there.
Everything is so calm and you can hear the fountain in the background.

[Visitor 2]
There's such a wide variety of flowers and they're all really bright.
It's just a really awesome place to go to if you want to relax.

[Visitor 3]
What I loved about my trip was there's a giant grassy area and there's bushes, which are very fun and there's also a maze area, and there's flowers in it as well.
It's really beautiful.

[Nathan]
My name is Nathan and I'm a seasonal gardener here at Greenbank.
I started working here after volunteering here for about six months.
I love Greenbank because I live in the city, and drive 15 minutes out of the city and then you end up in this little oasis of greenery.
Different varieties of plants, and it's just calm and quiet here and there's always a nice atmosphere.

I was weeding about two weeks ago; I just got this sense of calmness when I was doing it.
It was just me and just completely focused in, and then you could just see the result afterwards and what a big difference I'd made.
Just a feeling of serenity almost, which was strange because I hadn't had that in anything else that I've done!

[Visitor 4]
I love coming to Greenbank Garden. We're National Trust for Scotland members and we're local, so it's great to come here, especially on a beautiful sunny day like this to see the well-maintained gardens and have a day out with the kids.

[Visitor 5]
I really like to play hide and seek because it's really good, and I also really like the water fountain.

[Visitor 6]
I love coming to Greenbank Garden to look at all the flowers and the water fountain.

[Visitor 7]
I loved our visit today. It's our first time and we were amazed.
Coming into the courtyard, it's very welcoming and then coming into the open grassed area -- it's so beautiful, so peaceful and so well-maintained.
And then going into the managed garden area and seeing the wildflowers and the planting -- it's stunning, it's absolutely stunning.
It's a bit of an oasis and so, so close to Glasgow.