Ministerial Visit to Dandelion

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• Scotland’s Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants' Rights visits bio-diverse, sustainably created Floating Garden
• Floating Garden is now berthed by The Kelpies until September, following a tour of Scotland’s Canal network
• Mr Harvie also visited a neighbouring Dandelion Free For All event in Falkirk’s Helix Park, where thousands of free plants were given away to members of the public
• The Floating Garden and Free For All are both part of the Dandelion programme, where people are being encouraged to ‘Sow, Grow and Share’
• Scottish Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants' Rights, Patrick Harvie MSP has visited a unique ‘Floating Garden’, berthed at Falkirk’s iconic Kelpies.

The garden forms part of Dandelion, a major creative programme that champions ‘growing-your-own' and sharing food, ideas, music, knowledge and community. Commissioned by EventScotland and funded by the Scottish Government as part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, the project reimagines our relationship with food and the planet and the way we celebrate it, by ‘sowing, growing and sharing’ together.

The Floating Garden is one of 13 ‘Unexpected Gardens’ created by Dandelion across the country in unusual spaces and is delivered in partnership with Scottish Canals to realise the Dandelion vision on the waterways of Scotland. The Floating Garden reached Falkirk this weekend having completed its tour of the Scottish canal network, travelling from Glasgow to Edinburgh throughout June and July.

During his visit, Mr Harvie met members of the Dandelion team and toured the Floating Garden, created from specially adapted canal barges and housing plants grown using both traditional horticultural methods and ‘accelerated growing’ techniques, using new technologies to nurture plants inside miniature vertical farms. The garden comprises two barges – the first converted into a ‘floating allotment’, complete with a polytunnel, shed raised beds and three of Dandelion’s unique ‘Cubes of Perpetual Light’, 1x1m accelerated growing cubes, while the second is a ‘floating ecosystem’ drawing sustenance from the canal and in the process cleaning the water and feeding the plants.

Mr Harvie also visited Dandelion's nearby Free For All event in the Helix Park. Dandelion have been giving away thousands of plants at Free for All events in towns and cities across Scotland, inspiring people all over the country to ‘Sow, Grow and Share’, with members of the public invited to pick up their plants, learn how best to grow them and to enjoy a performance of harvest songs from across the world.