Our Gardens

The Ridge Gardens are based in two sites not far from Dunbar High Street, the Backlands Garden and Empire Close Garden. Up until recently both sites had lain to waste and offered no more than neglected derelict waste ground in the heart of Dunbar’s historical town centre.

The Ridge started work on regenerating the Backlands site in 2015, many hours of staff and volunteer time have gone into creating the much-loved community space that you can visit today. The garden is productive in many ways, beautiful flowers, organic fruit and vegetables as well as providing a safe and inspiring space to volunteer or simply just to be. Our produce is available to the community directly from the garden or from our local community owned grocers.

In 2020, we took on another challenge to create more community growing space at the Empire Close. The site previously housed a cinema and a sale room but had lain empty and unused since the 1960s. Under the direction of our Head Gardener, Lorraine Ross, we are designing and developing an apothecary garden, extensive cut-flower beds as well as vegetable growing space.