KDBM wins Gold.

What a couple of days it’s been. Yesterday was a full turn out for garden duties and we cracked on tidying up Rotary, Castle St, Clouds, Veg boxes, traffic lights boxes and a bit of Potentilla Patch, whew. Two trips to the recycling to top up the compost bin, which heads off to Caledonian Horticulture to be properly composted. Coincidentally, yesterday I took delivery of three large dumpy bags of gorgeous compost from CH which we will use around town. Community groups get this at a hugely discounted cost, which is such a help and completes the cycle.

Then today, another major event …..drum roll …….six of us from the group made the journey up to Stirling to attend the Keep Scotland Beautiful award event. Remember way back early August when we were working even harder? Well, we are so pleased to report Duns was awarded a GOLD!!!! We are so proud of our little town and the feedback we got from the judges was amazing. To top that, if it’s possible!, we received the Discretionary Award for Sustainability and the most beautiful wooden bowl. What a wonderful day.

Hope to have our awards on show at the Volunteer Hall in due course.

For Remembrance Day

11th November approaching and our thoughts go out to all service men and women and their families affected by conflicts all over the world. Armistice Sunday is 8th November this year and we have put together a variety of displays throughout town to commemorate all who never came home including one for all the horses and other animals sacrificed through war.

Tonight, our own Duns Players start a four night run of their Theatre performance ‘WAUR’ which is made up of a number of short stories telling tales of many conflicts throughout history. I hope you can still get tickets at Nairn’s and come along to the Volunteer Hall and support these amazing performers.

Autumn Tidy Up

We spent the first half hour tidying the front of the poly tunnel then headed off to a friend’s amazing garden for a wander about enjoying the fantastic autumn colours. The pictures are of our own colours at the tunnel though, not at all bad!

We will be finishing tidying all the potted plants at the tunnel later this week and are planning to hold an autumn pop up sale in a week or so.

Keeping Scotland Beautiful

Back at the beginning of the year the volunteers of Keeping Duns Blooming Marvellous decided to enter the Keep Scotland Beautiful competition for towns and villages – Scotland in Bloom. Duns is classed as a small town so we were sent our criteria to cover the work, and we set to.

Our normal Monday morning work covered everything in the criteria under the three headings, Horticultural Achievement, Environmental Impact and Community Participation, however, we had to document it all in a year-round diary – eek! Luckily our resident photographer, Dominique snaps away constantly so we had plenty of pictures to work on. I did my normal rambling about work each month and Lesley did a great job of consolidating it all in to a wonderful easy to read ‘book’. Then came the lead up to the actual judging day 3rd August and the extra hard graft started. Pavements were weeded, brushed and polished. Litter was lifted. Outside private houses, window boxes and pots were tweaked and replanted by their owners and the whole town was buzzing. We also hit an extremely hot (for Scotland!) few weeks and the plants were seriously suffering so the ‘watering team’ were out on a daily basis keeping things alive. By the time Monday 3rd August arrived I think we were all extremely glad! It was such a wonderful day though. We had guests from Duns Community Council, Scottish Borders Council, Duns & District Men’s Shed and many others. Our website kdbm.org has a junior page and a few of the children who attend our Parish Messy Church had a great time completing some of the craft ideas using plants. Lucy came along with her mum and had a table to herself to show off her and her friends work, which was fabulous.

Our lovely judges, Liz and Penny, from Keep Scotland Beautiful, seemed to really enjoy the day and were impressed by our lovely town. We have to wait until end of September or early October to see what we have been awarded, if anything, but, whatever happens, we will keep gardening away keeping Duns looking Blooming Marvellous.

Plants Struggling In The Hot Weather

This hot weather is lovely but the poor plants are really struggling. Everything is looking so scorched and quite a number may not recover.

We are keeping on top of watering the planters but have hoped not to have to water the main beds, however we’re going to lose a lot if they don’t get a drink soon, so Billy Bowser will be fully employed! The climate is definitely changing so we’re thinking of more drought resistant plants to add to the display.

“Plant Sale” 26th April 2026

What a fantastic plant sale we had today. Folk were queuing at the door for opening 12 noon! Nearly got run over in the rush. The plants flew out the door and the refreshments were devoured in no time. A huge success and a great boost to the funds. That’s our ‘Billy Bowser’ covered for insurance, service and tax plus all the bedding for the Market Square planters for the year. Such fantastic support from everyone. Thank you all so much.

Tree planting 9th March 2026

It’s been a productive week for the KDBM team with a tree planting project taking up three days. After applying for, and being fortunate to be awarded, a £900 grant from Tweed Forum and Borders Forest Trust, we purchased fifteen trees from a local supplier, Cheviot Trees, and set to planting them in Duns Public Park over Monday and Tuesday. Lots of the team turned up and we were more than ably assisted by two of our local Rotary Club members, Mike and Nigel, along with our staunch supporter Stuart Renton from Duns Community Council. Twelve of the fifteen trees, 3 Downy Birch, 3 Flowering Cherry, 3 Crab Apple and 3 Alder were soon in their new home and looking great. On the Tuesday, a few of us donned our wellies and ventured in to the ‘wetland’ area of the park to find new homes for the remaining trees, 3 Willows. I know they like water – I just hope they like it a lot!!

Following that job, on the Wednesday, Dave, Lesley and I met up with four wonderful men from Scottish Borders Council who, after checking for underground cables etc set to with the digger and prepared a splendid hole for a large Sorbus ‘Pink Pagoda’ which is going to make our triangle of Rowans on the Berwick Road, one of the entrances to Duns. Rowans have been long used as protectors of homes and settlements warding off evil spirits – Duns residents can sleep soundly now 😂

Litter Pick 31st January 2026

Keeping Duns Blooming Marvellous covers a number of issues, not just gardening!   Today we joined up with members of the Duns Walkers and did a couple of hours of cleaning up our streets, verges and neighbouring green spaces.   It was a pretty miserable day but 14 hardy souls turned up at the Volunteer Hall sporting HiViz and their trusty ‘pickers’.   Less than 2 hours later we had collected a total of 97.34 kgs, which is a hefty amount of rubbish just discarded by folks unknown – who are these people!!!!   A lovely hot drink and biscuit lifted our spirits in the Duns Parish Hall where a fund-raising coffee morning was being held on behalf of ‘Friends of the Knoll’, our local hospital.  2 hours work and so many people benefited, a morning well spent.

The picture shows all the bags ready to be taken to our local recycling centre with the help of our trusty ‘Billy and trailer’.

Lest We Forget

This is a special time of year when we all need to remember those brave men and women who lost their lives during the World Wars, and continue to do so in so many more wars. The poppy is a great symbol that we all recognise as being so important for the Armistice and for all our Ceremonies of Remembrance and it is also, obviously, a flower, so we feel it is very fitting that our gardening group put together a special display in honour. Many people in and around Duns have knitted and crocheted lovely poppies which we have draped around the War Memorial in our park plus the group got together to make a colourful display using old plastic flower pots – a great re-use of non-recyclable pots, which we all have piled up in our greenhouses and sheds, plus a fun afternoon of crafting. We also need to remember all the animals who lost their lives during those dreadful times and a purple poppy is a good way to highlight the plight of all of them from horses to pigeons, so many millions were slaughtered.

Let us all wear our poppies with pride – Lest we Forget.

KDBM 10th Anniversary

It’s hard to believe but our little band of volunteers, under the title of ‘Keeping Duns Blooming Marvellous’ has reached it’s 10th Anniversary. Back in October 2015, I contacted Scottish Borders Council to ask why the large flower bed in the Public Park was empty and, by the end of the conversation, had taken on the daunting task of cultivating it!

Fast forward 10 years and we now have 13 large flower beds, 45 planters of various sizes, a wild flower bed and a giant pile of tyres softened with planting to create a colourful show all year round. It’s a daunting task to keep on top of all of that but, with a fantastic bunch of fun folk ready to take on all sorts of challenges, we manage it all. Always with a laugh and always ready to take on new projects we crack on from Feb to Dec then hibernate for the harshest of the winter months.

Hot drinks and ice cream at the end of each gardening session are always enjoyed and we love when the locals honk horns or wave at us in the passing – great encouragement! Our ‘Flowerbed Trail’ is well supported by locals and visitors and we hope that people do spend time on the website learning about all the different beds and flowers we have planted. There is also a fantastic section for children of all ages to encourage all sorts of activities in gardening. Perfectly suited for schools and youth groups such as Nurseries and Guiding.
It’s a lot of work, but we love it and hope that you do too.

Park Bed 2016 before sustainability legislation
Park Bed 2025