riversidenaturally

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Riverside Naturally is a community group and registered charity based in Stirling that aims to make Riverside a better place to live by making it a better place for nature.

23/10/2026

It's Orchard Day soon! 🍎 Riverside Naturally invites you to celebrate the harvest with us, on Saturday 31st October at the Riverbank Resource Centre polytunnel 🍎 12 noon - 2pm

We've harvested the apples, come and make some delicious fresh juice and share our home baking. It's a free, family friendly event.

There will be seasonal games for kids of all ages, including dooking for apples!

06/10/2026

Evening session this Thursday, 8th October. Come and help to improve the woodland habitat.

As we are now into autumn, this is our last evening session of the year, although with the nights drawing in already we'll start at the *earlier time of 6pm*.

It's also our only maintenance session planned for October, as on the last Saturday of the month we'll be at the Riverbank Resource Centre for our Orchard Day apple party!

The plan for Thursday evening: there are a few jobs to finish at the orchard, but the main focus will be our Woodland Wonderland garden, named for Alice the otter carved from a tree stump. The trees have been self-seeding and sending out runners so we have lots of new saplings, and due to the limited space of this woodland habitat, we need to move some of them to make room for the varied levels of woodland growth that enable flora and fauna to thrive. Thankfully, our friends at Treelink can rehome some of the young trees, but if anyone would like a birch sapling we'll have some going spare. One of the main tasks will be digging them out, but there will also be jobs in cutting back, and weeding the paths.

We always have a range of tasks around the woodland gardens and orchard, so there's something for everyone. If you don't see us at the orchard, come find us at the nearby Woodland Wonderland.

Thursday 8th October 2026
From 6pm until dark

🍵 We'll finish up by 7:15pm for a cuppa (bring your own drink, we'll supply biscuits)
☀️ Dress for the weather, it's likely to change!
🥾 Wear sturdy footwear and gloves if you have them.

🌻 New volunteers are always welcome.
📧 Please get in touch if you have any questions.

We look forward to seeing you there!

24/09/2026

This Saturday, we're working on the orchard again, come and join us and pick a few apples while you're there!

Meet us at Riverside Community Orchard on:
Saturday 26th September 2026
From 9.30am -12pm

Our main task this month will be to 'turn over' the compost bays - the is where we sort through the three bays and mix up the contents. This helps to speed up the decomposition rate which ensures we are making the best compost possible.

Other jobs will include working on removing the thistles in the Orchard area and some gentle weeding, primarily keeping the paths clear, in the Story and Woodland Gardens.

🍵 Break at 10.30am for a cuppa and catch up.
☀️ Dress for the weather, it's likely to change!
🥾 Wear sturdy footwear and gloves if you have them.

🌻 New volunteers are always welcome and we have something for everyone.
📧 Please get in touch if you have any questions.

We look forward to seeing you there!

09/09/2026

Join us for the harvest!

Meet us at Riverside Community Orchard on Thursday 10th September from 6.30pm.

This fun session focuses on identifying the ripe fruit and gathering the harvest to be stored until we can juice it on Orchard Day.

☀️ Dress for the weather, it's likely to change!

🥾 Wear sturdy footwear and gloves if you have them.

🍎 This is a gentle activity with some reaching and stretching.

🌻 New volunteers are always welcome and we have something for everyone.

📧 Please get in touch if you have any questions.

We look forward to seeing you there!

27/08/2026

Join us for our regular maintenance session this Saturday, 29th August 2026

From 9.30am -12pm

Tasks will include weeding, tidying, and clearing, as this month is our last big chance to sort out areas such as the Orchard and Story Garden before we turn our focus to the harvest. We love our nettles, thistles, and brambles in the woodland gardens, and the cleavers in the orchard - they're great for nature. But we need to keep on top of them to allow room for our less established plants to grow, so we have varied flowers throughout the year, which in turn supports a variety of animals.

🍵 Break at 10.30am for a cuppa and catch up.

☀️ Dress for the weather, it's likely to change!

🥾 Wear sturdy footwear and gloves if you have them.

🌻 New volunteers are always welcome and we have something for everyone.

📧 Please get in touch if you have any questions.

We look forward to seeing you there!

24/07/2026

Our monthly Saturday maintenance session is tomorrow, 25th July 9:30am - 12pm 🐞 Come and join us!

🌳 We have various little jobs to do around the woodland gardens and orchard, including weeding and other tidying tasks. Mostly fairly gentle this time and as ever there are options to suit different abilities and interests 🦋

All tools provided, we even have spare gloves if you don't have your own 🧤

Dress for the weather 🌦 and bring water, for yourself and maybe extra for the flowers too 🌼 meet at the orchard bee bed (pictured) or come find us at the teabreak around 10:30 ☕️

06/04/2026

💛Spring is here & so is our first evening volunteer session of the year. Meet us at Riverside Community Orchard on
Thursday 9th April 2026 from 6.30pm - 8pm 💚

🦋Continuing with our ethos of reusing as much as possible on site, we cut some of the thick dogwood we coppiced earlier in the year into poles & we’ll be using them as fence posts up near the orchard where we’ll be creating rustic fencing around our vital nettle patch, come & be part of protecting & celebrating the wondrous nettle.

🐌Down at the Story Garden we’ll be replanting a conifer and pruning the buddleia.

🦉We will also have a look at initial thoughts for establishing a boundary at the back of the Story Garden, our idea is to move self-sown saplings and create some dead hedges.

🪲And if all that is not exciting enough there’s always selective weeding to be done! Dress for the ever changing weather

🌦️ ☀️⛈️ 🌳🍃🌱🌿

07/02/2026

Happy Imbolc! People have celebrated this halfway point between the winter solstice and the Spring Equinox since ancient times. This year it was on 1st February and while the wintry showers continue, we have been noticing the evenings getting lighter already.

Last weekend we got together for our first maintenance session of the year. Our main focus was down in the Story Garden - although there was work to be done in the orchard too, pulling out suckers and seedlings from between the fruit trees and preparing for the winter pruning that we'll start soon if there's a dry spell.

Down in the woodland gardens, we embarked on transporting the wonderful woodchip for mulching and supplementing paths. We dug out spreading sedge and couch grass and checked the status of our biodiverse planting. We brought our new tools to bear on the red dogwood, which has sprawled luxuriously out and up with only sporadic interventions; we decided it was time to get it under control. Some of the long slender stems that we cut off with our pruning saw and magic secateurs were woven into the willow arbour, bracing the structure in anticipation of new growth. We have other weaving-themed ideas for the rest!

30/01/2026

Tomorrow is the last day of January, and our first volunteering session of the 2026. But some of our members spent their holidays getting a head start on work in the gardens, during a rare frosty day of this mild winter.

Come and speak to us tomorrow if you see us around the orchard or woodland gardens, during our session 9.30 - 12pm. Breaktime at 10.30am, either the orchard or the arbour depending where most people are.

Photographs by Paul Dumbleton

Address

Riverside Drive
Stirling
FK81XU

Website

http://www.riversidenaturally.org/

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