A new toolkit has been launched by Greenspace Scotland to help people across Scotland find new, exciting and unusual places to grow fruit and veg in their villages, towns and cities.
We realise the ambitions of the CSGN can't be delivered by us working with our traditional public sector partners, we have to target and engage with businesses - encouraging them to take up sustainable 'green' practices and helping us to make the CSGN a reality.
Over the past year the CSGN Support Unit has been working with 10 businesses in Central Scotland which have all benefited from investing in their greenspace. Sometimes these are direct benefits via tourism other times the benefits are more subtle such as a reducing staff turn-over. Output from this research includes a series 2-page summaries and 4-page reports – from the Green Network Businesses section of our website.
We are now about to take this research out on the road.
We are looking forward to seeing you at this year’s CSGN Forum. As well as our fantastic speakers, we how have our list of soap box speakers and three delegates with exciting concepts have been selected to make presentations to win up to £5,000 in our CSGN Ideas Fund. The audience will have the chance to pick the winner. The last few places are going fast so don’t forget to book your place.
Two new Information Notes Green Networks and Development Planning and Integrated Habitat Networks are now available on the Scottish Natural Heritage website.
A power point with Green Network planning case studies is also available on this page under the related links to the right hand side.
Together the notes set out the benefits of Green Networks and Integrated Habitat Networks (IHN) in Development Planning. The IHN note provides a straightforward reference point for planners for IHN related documents and guidance. A map viewer showing IHN data is also available, along with specific CSGN Key Messages notes explain how to interpret the mapping.
greenspace scotland has been working on a programme of Community Placemaking for Green Networks in Glasgow and West Lothian. Early findings show that Placemaking is a valuable tool for engaging communities in planning and developing green networks.
The First Minister, Alex Salmond MSP, has accepted an invitation from CSGN Chair, Keith Geddes to open the John Muir Trail on 21 April 2014. Access and arts officers from Councils along the Trail met recently in to plan for the opening event and the Chair is also working closely with Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), the John Muir Trust and other partners on plans for next year's launch. An agency will be appointed to coordinate activity across the council areas.
The first-ever overarching strategy for Scotland's historic environment was unveiled today for consultation by Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop.