Our Projects
Most of our work is focused on increasing biodiversity by creating habitats for wildlife. Read about all our ongoing projects here (apart from the wetland project, which has its own page here)
Wildflower and hedgerows
One of our most important long-term projects in the park has been planting wildflower and hedgerows.
Cammo park has had lots of big trees and open fields of grass for a long time. This is because it was once a private estate, then a golf course, and then a farm with cattle.
This meant that there was almost no flower and fruit for insects and birds. So, the Friends set about bringing in native flowers and shrubs.
Long hedgerows were planted around all the field margins. These provided food and shelter for lots of animals.
Growing trees in a public park is not easy – voles, rabbits and deer eat the small trees and dogs pull off the protective tubes and break the stakes.
However, thanks to the hard work of the Friends and volunteers, we now have huge lines of hawthorn, willow and other native shrubs surrounding the open fields.
In the fields themselves we sowed seeds and planted plugs. A Council contractor cut and baled the grass to encourage flower and thin out the grasses.
A key plant is an annual called yellow rattle. This weakens the grasses and leaves room for other flowers. Cammo went from having almost no rattle to around two million plants in eight or nine years.
The fields that were once just two or three species of grass now have dozens of native flowering plants – orchids, tansy, meadow cranesbill and many others.
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In the past, The Friends have organised for tree surgeons to bring wood chip, brash, and logs into the park. We used these to create habitat piles and to cover the muddy paths.
The piles of logs and branches provide perfect feeding and hibernating spots for frogs and toads, and great homes for native insects and wood mice. We also used to take in people's old Christmas trees, piles of which create great habitats for robins and wrens.
Deadwood Project
Over the last 50 years the Walled Garden in the south-west of Cammo Estate had mostly been left to grow wild, and the walls had fallen into disrepair, some in.an unsafe state. Each spring there has been a good display of Snowdrops, and there are some impressive Goat Willows. Our first intervention was to plant an orchard of native fruit trees in 2015 - mostly apples and a few pears and plums. Next a bee enclosure was established in the NE corner. Since 2018 archaeologists from EAFS have investigated the buildings in and around the Walled Garden. In 2023 we established two small areas of non-native planting for bees, and in 2024 we started to prepare an area for soft fruit.
Our Walled Garden project started in 2025, after stonemasons working for the Council had rebuilt the south wall and repaired other walls. This work had left large bare areas and some rubble strewn in and around the Walled Garden. In spring 2025 we prepared and planted a soft fruit area with 38 bushes, sowed a strip of wildflower inside the walls and planted a prickly hedge around the bee enclosure, all assisted by a grant from Edinburgh's Community Grants Fund. A major task in 2025 was to keep the new planting watered, through a long dry spring and summer. We took cuttings from goat willows and planted them, and planted other saplings around the Walled Garden. We started to cut grass in the orchard. We have started to gather up the rubble, separating out bricks and stones that can be reused. We are now working to create a Victorian Garden in part of the footprint of the former glasshouse against the north wall.