St Andrews’ Not-So-Secret Gardens: What Edible Campus Can Offer Students

Did you know your own hall might have a garden? While other students make midnight ramen cups, you could be cooking with fresh fruits and vegetables cultivated by Transition St Andrews’ Edible Campus program. Edible Campus, which is comprised of more than a dozen gardens and orchards spread throughout the town, has one simple purpose: to grow food for local tables. University Hall has been home to a large garden for almost a decade, Andrew Melville hosts a seed-sowing session every Friday, and even Gannochy has a small garden just off of North Street — so why don’t students take advantage of them?

I spoke to Alistair Macleod, Transition’s Project Manager, and Julia Hyman, a postgraduate student volunteer, to find out what it means to harvest our own food in St Andrews and how students can get involved.

Macleod explained the basic Edible Campus process: each garden space has its own garden leader who decides what to grow and then runs regular gardening sessions for volunteers. 

What many students don’t realise, however, is that anyone is allowed to harvest and eat food from the gardens, even if they’ve never volunteered for Edible Campus. “As long as someone’s eating it, I don’t mind,” Macleod said — otherwise it just goes to waste.

Still, Macleod encourages students to try getting down in the dirt and see how it feels to grow their own produce. “A connection with what you’re growing is important [...] and a connection with the land gives you a healthy opportunity to live a healthy lifestyle,’’ he said. Harvesting your own food is “a real pleasure’’ especially for avid cooks, Hyman added. She often uses ingredients from the gardens in her dishes, and finds the freshness “worlds apart” from store-bought produce.

Maintaining that personal connection to the garden can be tricky, however, as volunteers come and go before they can reap the benefits of their work. Gardening is a “cyclical” process, Hyman explained, and it usually takes a year or more before you can enjoy what you’ve sown. This time commitment is especially difficult in a university town like St Andrews. 

“Students move on,” Macleod said. Individual enthusiasm for the project often only lasts an academic year or less before fading. Despite this challenge, Macleod believes that a garden can act as an important anchor for a town that changes as much as St Andrews does. Hyman agreed that the gardens “definitely makes you feel happier and more connected to the place that [you’re] in — a little more grounded’’. 

Making sure those gardens stay green takes active engagement year-round, though, and some volunteers worry that there just aren’t enough new faces to keep it going. Maintaining the Edible Campus spaces takes money and time, and it’s “hard for Transition to justify [expenses] to the university if people don’t show up’’, Hyman said, especially when food ends up going to waste.

At the moment, Transition is on the lookout for skilled gardeners to run sessions of their own. “We’re looking for garden leaders at each site’’ Macleod explained. A busy student herself, Hyman wants to encourage her peers to take some time away from screens and sign up: “it’s good for students to get their hands dirty”.

“Gardens are temporary spaces,’’ Macleod explained. “You can do it once and never again,’’ Hyman added. “You don’t have to commit and there is no cost to the students”. The Edible Campus project just hopes to “get folks out” and into the garden.

Beyond getting to grow and harvest your own food, both Macleod and Hyman emphasized the community aspect that is produced from working in these gardens. As Macleod put it, Edible Campus is all about “encouraging people to socialise and harvest together”. Gardening sessions tend to be a “good mix” of students and University community members during the academic year, while postgrads and local residents help maintain the gardens over summer.

Maclead and Hyman agreed that helping with the gardens is a good way to give back to the St Andrews community. “If you’re going to take so much from the community, you may as well put back into it’’, Hyman said. Though Transition welcomes anyone to harvest from the Edible Campus gardens, Hyman emphasised the importance of contributing to its efforts. 

Macleod believes learning about food production is important for students and sees gardening skills as key life skills. Hyman has already seen benefits as her gardening knowledge has grown, having so far learned how to cultivate kale and leeks.

The mental health benefit of working in the gardens is another big reason why some volunteers choose to return. Edible Campus’ gardens aim to be calm spaces, where students can sit in nature and take an hour to de-stress, Macleod said. Hyman often comes to the gardens just to listen to music, hang out, and talk with friends. They both recommended St Mary’s Secret Garden as an especially peaceful place. Tucked away behind the quad, it’s home to apple trees, pear trees, strawberry bushes, and more. It often functions as a space for society events, and Edible Campus is always happy for groups to make use of it, Macleod said.

Despite its small volunteer base, the Edible Campus program is still expanding. Macleod has ambitions for several new projects that he hopes will spark fresh excitement for the program. He wants to create a covered growing space at St Mary’s to house vegetables, tomatoes, and chillies while holding space for the “plant hotel’’ where students can leave their plants over summer, a new part of the project.

To Macleod, and many of the Edible Campus volunteers, gardening isn’t a minor hobby, but an important way to “connect [people] with the land and keep them happy” in a rapidly evolving digital world. It’s one of “life’s little and great joys”, he said, but “people walk past and don’t know [the gardens] exist.’’ Edible Campus hopes that will change soon.

Illustration by Mia Fish