Thornliebank Library welcomed each year group from Thornliebank Primary and ELCC over the month of May. 

This has been a brilliant way to share what The Root Cause project is, why it’s important and excitingly kick-starting the planning our community Gardens features and functionality!

We recapped the wonderful Root Cause centred events held in our libraries so far (read more here) such as our Food scrap growth experiment, seed bombs craft, and our grass earth man craft. There was much interest in rerunning these events again and we have even more exciting things planned throughout the year, so please keep a look out on our social media pages: 

We talked about Climate change and greenhouse gases, and received some insightful responses from all year groups. Thornliebank Primary had already been teaching about such issues –with the recent COP26 and Earth day pledges!

Once we completed our introductions we moved outside into the garden space – explained a little of the ideas our working group has come up with so far, talked about the local wildlife and how a green garden space may benefit them. 

Once fully acquainted the children returned indoors and used a blueprint to plan what they’d like to see in the garden space.

Finally we regrouped as a whole to share our ideas on our flip chart – while we got some weird and wonderful responses – there were definitely ideas supported as a collective – with clever ways to upcycle or reuse materials – such as a tyre converted into a pond space, a homemade bug hotel, and in line with the design of our Root Cause logo – a recycled materials sculpture related to our project. 

Thanks again to Thornliebank Primary and the ELCC for their amazing ideas when visiting – we can’t to see these ideas become a reality. 

22nd April 2022

To celebrate #EarthDay, the Root Cause project held a ‘Hairy Caterpillar’ and ‘Earth man’ event at Giffnock and Thornliebank Libraries, led by the brilliant Kay and Alan.

The children got to make either a ‘Caterpillar’ or ‘Earth man’ out of grass seed and soil. They took them home to look after, watering them gradually each day until the grass seed started to grow!

Take a look at the new resident Caterpillar at Giffnock library.

Over at Clarkston, Eaglesham and Busby Libraries we held a seed bomb craft event, where we made these fantastic little balls bursting with wildflower seeds!

The seed bombs are not only great fun, but by sowing native wildflowers they provide vital resources to support lots of different insects, that can struggle to survive in urban environments.

Barrhead Foundry rounded the day off with a beautiful book display to inspire, promote and engage readers of all ages.

Thanks everyone for coming along!

March 2022

#ScienceWeek took place between 11th-20th March and we held a food scrap event for the Root Cause project at Giffnock library, led by the wonderful Briony!

This event showed the children (and parents) how some veggies could be regrown easily from veg scraps, simply on the windowsill at home. Spring onions and leeks were on the menu that day!

To start off, Briony explained greenhouse gases with a cool science experiment using eco balloons before tackling the food scraps.

The children each created a graph which would be used to track the growth progress of the new veggies before carefully putting the ends of their spring onions and leeks into a glass jar. we all had a giggle coming up with the names for our new vegetables! Favourite was definitely…Mr.

Thanks everyone for coming, we look forward to hearing how your veggies get on!