Proposed Dingwall Allotments and Community Garden

Old River Road, Dingwall - update January 2024

Residents Meeting: Thursday 18th January 2024, St Clements Church Hall

drop in anytime between 4pm and 8pm

Dingwall Community Development Company (DCDC) has been discussing Allotments with Dingwall Community Council and Highland Council's Community Food Growing Coordinator. We were told that people in Dingwall were looking for a place where they could grow their own food, have access to a polytunnel and enjoy a community garden. We all think that providing Allotments in Dingwall would be a great idea, enabling anyone living in the town to grow their own vegetables, fruit and flowers, to learn from other allotment holders and enjoy the benefits of being physically active in the open air.

DCDC have been asking anyone living in Dingwall who is interested in having an allotment to speak to us, and a small group met 4 times in 2023. You can read an article about this here.

We now hope to move forward with plans to create Allotments and a Community Garden in the field at the end of Old River Road during 2024. DCDC has been offered the site off Old River Road by the owners, Dingwall & Highland Marts. We have had a soil analysis done by Hutton Soils in Aberdeen and a detailed site survey. We also visited the Hawthorn Allotments in Inverness to learn about their experience of setting up that project and we had discussions with Kirsty Ellen, Highland Council’s Food Growing Co-ordinator and Local Councillors. Cllr Angela MacLean is particularly supporting this project and Highland Council Architects have helped us draw up a sketch plan of a proposed site layout - see picture above.

We would now like to invite local residents to meet with us to hear about our progress and to give us your thoughts on these plans. This will help us to draw up the final plan which we hope will form the basis of a Planning Application in Spring 2024.

We are holding a drop-in session on 18th January 2024 at St Clement’s Church Hall between 4pm and 8pm: tea, coffee and biscuits will be available and hope you can come along to meet with us.  If you can’t make it to the drop-in session, please do send any suggestions or comments to dingwallallotmentsassociation@gmail.com. Thank-you.