ECBI - Edinburgh Community Backgreens Initiative - Providing Greenspace for the Community

ECBA's central role is to establish community backgreen groups and support them to regenerate their backgreens into beautiful community greenspaces.  Since 2005, we have been developing a model for setting these projects up. 

We have provided below and in the next section a step by step guide for setting up a community backgreen project. 

Step 1. Contact ECBA
If you think your tenement square has potential to become a community backgreen site, and you are enthusiastic about participating, please contact us and register your interest.  It may be that we have already identified your site, or that some of your neighbours have already contacted us. 

There is a limit to the number of sites which we can work with each year, (normally constrained by how much funding we can raise), so we cannot guarantee to work with every group that approaches us, but we will try our best.  Nominate Your Site to become a community backgreen.

Step 2. Promote the Project
Our first step in setting up a community backgreen group is to establish whether there is demand for a project around a site.  There are several things we do, they all need the involvement of the residents around the site.

• Put up stair posters promoting the project,
• Carry out a door to door survey to tell folk about the project and gather contact details,
• Set-up a networking webgroup for the site.

You can read more about promoting the project here >

Step 3. Set-up A Community Backgreen Group
If there is sufficient interest we announce a public meeting to propose the creation of a community backgreen group for the site.  The community backgreen group is the 'vehicle' for the regeneration and maintenance of the site.  How much of the site the group takes on is up to the group. 

You can read more about Community Backgreen Groups here >