Welcome to the Living Field web site
Coming soon ….. Ancient grains – out of Africa ….. How dry was 25? ….. Music for the seasons – the year in tradition …..
Latest ….. Exploring street art, public art, beginning with Smug (Glasgow) and Danie Mellor (Sydney) on the News page …. more on our favourite landrace at Bere – a delicious journey of discovery by Ruth Watson ….. New life in the 1974 Aberfeldy Manifesto on food security …… North Coast Visiting – notes on the NCVC at Thurso … Farming Fit for the Future exhibition on regenerative agriculture ………. lessons from the Living Pavilion 2019 Melbourne Australia ….. Humus miraculum-Nature under screen exhibition Cahors France …. VESS Bruce Ball’s visual evaluation of soil structure …. Legume pages at the 5000-Years project are being revamped …..
After the very dry spring and early summer of 2025, the weather turned to cloud and wet in the middle of June. This uncommon cloud formation was seen above grassland and regenerating hardwood forest in the Ochil Hills near Glen Sherup on the day before the summer solstice. Photograph by gk-images.
… continued …..
Giant rice grain sculptures Singapore …. Plant Atlas 2020 by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland …… Inverness Botanics and some notes on the local climate at 57N ….. Interested in Ecological Restoration? Get involved with SER Europe ….. and drawings of Pictish Beasts by Kathryn Owen ….. James Hutton’s Unconformity on Arran …. Ancient grains – much missed by the editor so he grew his own .…. Medicinal forage Kinloss Abbey Moray ..… Owlbirds – update from Kit Martin on her moth project …. Global wheat a summary of who grows what ….. Making ink from oak galls by Jean Duncan ….. Ancient and modern – techniques with wool in textile art by Ruth Black …. Edible fungi club – new interest at the Living Field by Gill Banks ….. Ad Gefrin | Yeavering notes on the new museum and archaeological site in Northumberland ….. Huntly mapping project Land use, climate change and food ….. New Growers network for bere the barley landrace ….. All Among the Barley – history of a song by Russ Clare …..
The summer solstice was a peak time for flowering at the Living Field demonstration garden – here are (top left c’wise) field scabious, greater knapweed, corncockle, opium poppy and viper’s bugloss. More notes and images of the plants and their uses at the Living Field Garden.
The Living Field has been run since 2001 by staff at the James Hutton Institute, Dundee, UK. We work through outreach, education and shared experience to promote sustainable production of food and other products from the land.
Origins and content
The web site opened in spring 2014 to celebrate 10 years of the Living Field Garden. New sowings and plantings stopped during the pandemic. The Living Field now operates through its wider community, exploring sustainable use of land and natural products.
The sites hosts ‘Pages’ and ‘Posts’. The main Pages are listed in the upper header/menu shown above the header image. Each page has a set of sub-pages dealing with different aspects of the main topic. Pages are not static in that the content may be revised and new sub-pages added.
The beach at Tentsmuir in Fife looking (u) out to sea and (l) inland across dunes and shell-sand that not so long ago were sea, but are now land being colonised by shoreline vegetation. Tentsmuir is one of few places where land is being created, here through a combination of tides, wind and the Tay estuary.
Posts include articles, photographs, art and craft – some written by Hutton Institute people but many contributed by the wider Living Field community. Recent posts are listed in the right-hand menu. By June 2023 there were over 240 posts – they can be viewed in the month by month archive at the bottom of the menu.
We hope you enjoy visiting the site. You will find a summary of current activities and collaborations in the list lower down this page under Regular Content.
Regular content
- New articles, opinion pieces, photographs and art work are published under Posts, the most recent listed in the right-hand margin.
- The News page links to what’s going on in the Living Field project and other matters topical.
- Climate and sustainable food is a new series of articles covering climate and production, past events and trends, current status and action for the future. The series will continue during 2024.
- The Garden relates the evolving habitats and and living plant exhibits in what has been the centrepiece of the project, created in a corner of the Institute’s farm in 2004. Activity in the garden was suspended during lockdown and most parts of it have now ‘gone wild’.
To see all the pages and posts relevant to a topic, enter a word in ‘search’, also in the right-hand menu.
- The Year records the seasonal cycle in the croplands through the quarter days and cross quarter days. Various posts connect to it, for example on daylength in the north.
- 5000 years is a long term project on the innovations that have sustained life in the maritime croplands and more widely since the neolithic. We with 5000-Plants – fibres, dyes, weeds, and coming soon – cereals and legumes. The 5000 years pages are connected to many Posts written by growers, artists and craft workers.
- People profiles collaborations with the Living Field in art and science, including Jean Duncan (archaeology, food, Capsella), Tina Scopa (plant pressing workshops) and the family of Slovenian artist Vida Fakin.
The Living Field recalls here the skills of Caroline Hyde-Brown who crafts paper, pots and other articles using plant-based products. Some of her work appeared on the Living Field web in 2021 at Repurposing grass pea ….
Contacts
The Living Field exists through the efforts of many people. For more information on its origin, aims and charitable funding, please see Origins of the Living Field and About.
Gladys wright, who had been involved since the beginning of the Living Field in 2001, retired from the James Hutton at the end of 2019. From a muddy field describes her contributions to the project.
All enquiries on the Living Field project, garden, CD, study centre, web site, The Year, the 5000 Years project: Geoff Squire at geoff.squire@hutton.ac.uk or geoff.squire@outlook.com.
The ‘horizontal’ water mills at Huxter, Shetland, once used for grinding corn, are powered by a stream that flows from a loch above. Each mill is in a small stone building – water flows through one, then down to the next. The mill wheels operate though an ancient mechanism found through Europe and Mediterranean regions, evidence of Shetland’s connectedness. Photograph taken in June 2016. More at Shetland’s Horizontal Water Mills.
Photographs
All images on this site are taken and prepared by the Living Field team unless stated otherwise. Please respect our ownership of these images . The Living Field is supported by people and charities and is not profit-making.
Photographs on this Welcome page change with the turning of the year.
A selection of images and quotes are given in the right-hand menu – they will also change with the year.
