ScotRail is supporting the new ‘Station Garden’ created by the award-winning Friends of Wemyss Bay.
It includes a vegetable plot with beds of carrots, leeks, onions and salad crops.
There is also a ‘polytunnel’, traditionally used to protect young fruit and vegetable crops, in which tomatoes, courgettes and peppers are thriving.
The polytunnel will also be used for growing bedding plants for transfer to containers in the station. All the plants are being cared for by people who live in nearby flats.
The garden – on disused ground behind the car park – will be on formal display for the first time on Thursday 11 August.
Nancy Cameron, chairwoman of the Friends of Wemyss Bay Station, said:
“The new garden allows local flat-dwellers a chance to reconnect with gardening. Already the beds are planted with onions, leeks, carrots and salad crops.”
Volunteers tending the new garden include Sheena and Bill Stevenson, a retired school inspector.
They moved from Lenzie to a flat in Skelmorie – where they miss having a garden.
Sheena said: “The raised beds at the station garden are the best of both worlds. It allows us to again experience the joys of gardening – without having to strain our backs digging into the ground.”
John Yellowlees, ScotRail external relations manager, said:
“When we heard about the Friends’ imaginative proposal to use this corner of the station that was surplus to our requirements, we were delighted to install a secure fence so that they could get on with creating the raised beds.”
Jenny Mollison, secretary of the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society and The Scotsman newspaper’s allotments correspondent, who will be at the event, commented:
“Seldom has there been greater interest in growing vegetables – so it is splendid to see surplus railway land being brought into use for this purpose.”
