Lauriston Community Farm in Edinburgh have provision for 50 community allotment spaces, open to local community groups and organisations (rather than individuals) to fosters a sense of community, support growing and working together, build confidence, encourage knowledge sharing between people with different levels of growing experience, promote shared resources, tackle social isolation and enhance wellbeing. Lauriston is an agroecology farm which emphasises protecting the soil, enhancing biodiversity and creating sustainable farming without the need for synthetic chemical inputs. Plant health is a top priority for the farm and ensuring their community allotments are being managed in a biosecure manner is key to this aspiration.

With funding from the PHC, they will run workshops over the growing season focussing on biosecurity and composting and develop protocols, based on the PHC Key Principles, for use by farm staff and allotment holders. The whole project will be celebrated toward the end of the growing season with the unveiling of a mural on one of our farm buildings. Through these efforts, Lauriston Farm aims to become a model farm of best practice for other community allotments and gardens and all protocols/guidance created would be shared across these networks.