Author: Paul Barclay

Why every day should be mental health day

, by Paul Barclay
Saturday 10 October was designated World Mental Health Day, a subject that is very close to my heart. Every week Cumbernauld Living Landscape’s Wild Ways Well project runs sessions to help people experience the mental health benefits of nature. There are lots of theories why people benefit from being exposed to nature. Some think it comes from our evolutionary past,…

It’s great to be back!

, by Paul Barclay
As it has been for everyone else, it’s been a strange summer for the Cumbernauld Living Landscape team. We’ve done our best to adapt by delivering a host of online content, but what we’ve always been working towards is getting back outside again, meeting and working with our volunteers and the community. We’ve worked hard to change the way we…

Go exploring

, by Paul Barclay
Although I’m not a local I’ve been working in Cumbernauld’s parks and wildlife reserves for several years now and I’ve come to know them pretty well. Imagine my surprise last week when I took a slightly different route from normal while I was out walking and came across somewhere completely new! At Cumbernauld Living Landscape one of our aims is…

Wild about wildflowers

, by Paul Barclay
Late summer is a great time to spot wildflowers. Many plants use the time when days are still warm and light is still plentiful to put on their best displays of colour, working in symbiosis with pollinators to create breath-taking sights out in the parks and wildlife reserves. Cumbernauld has many great places to see wildflowers, Ravenswood, Luggiebank and St…

Making Greenspaces We Can Share

, by Paul Barclay
Throughout lockdown it was a common quote that ‘we were all in this together’ and that Covid-19 affected everyone equally. But it wasn’t equal. I’m lucky enough to live in a house with a garden. Lucky enough to have time to spend in it when things got too tough, when fear and emotion threatened to overwhelm me. It is easy…

The Mayflower

, by Paul Barclay
“Ne’er cast a cloot til May is oot…” I can still mind my old Grandad saying this to me on a spring morning when I was little as I tried to leave my winter jacket behind before going a walk. My Granda used the phrase to mean the month, and he stuck religiously by it, keeping his jumper on long…

Green at the end of the tunnel

, by Paul Barclay
For most of us the last few weeks have been a stressful time. The long-term effects on people’s mental health is unknowable but it is likely that more of us will suffer the effects of depression, anxiety, low moods and confidence. These effects can be felt by anyone, at any time, no matter how ‘strong’ they may seem to others,…

The Best Laid Plans

, by Paul Barclay
One of the first tasks I undertook when I went back to work in January was to plan out 2020 was for our green mental wellbeing project Wild Ways Well. What new ideas did we have, what sorts of sessions could we run. I was excited for the year ahead working in greenspaces along with the people and communities of…

A stroll with the snowdrops

, by Paul Barclay
Cumbernauld Snowdrops, c. Katrina Martin/2020Vision Hope’s Flower, Eve’s Tears, the beautiful Fair Maids of February, the portentous Death Bell or maybe even just simple Dingle Dangles. Whatever you call them, snowdrops have arrived in Cumbernauld’s woods. Legend says that snowdrops were the only flower kind enough to share their colour with the newly made snow and thus became the only…

A new ancient tradition

, by Paul Barclay
We don’t just work to protect greenspaces here at Cumbernauld Living Landscape, we also try to engage with them at a human level, and preserve some of the ways our ancestors would have interacted with the woodlands. Recently the Wild Ways Well group went “Wassailing”. This is an ancient tradition that people believed helped woodlands to come back to life…

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