Achiltibuie Garden Blog

 

Achiltibuie Garden Blog

 

Monday 23 February 2009

February Newsletter

Below is a copy of the newsletter we have sent out to our community and thought you may find it interesting as well.

Achiltibuie Garden
2009 is now well underway and with the snow behind us our thoughts are turning to establishing our new garden. When we sent you our last newsletter Colin, Allan and Di were struggling against the elements to erect our new growing houses. We now have the planting plans drawn up, seeds have been sown and before long the interior will start to take shape. It won't be too long until we have our first crops ready for selling!
Our local fencers, Iain and Christie, have almost completed the deer and rabbit-proof fencing. Martin and Ian have built an access road which has been crucial at this stage and has let us see how The Garden will nestle down into the croft.
The shelter belt will be created with a range of conifers, broad-leaved trees and shrubs, with as many native species as possible. The variety in shapes, heights and species will create an interesting visual aspect as well as encouraging wildlife.
After a huge amount of work our new website http://www.thehydroponicum.com/ went live in January and we've had positive feed back from customers old and new. Most of our mail orders are generated via the website and as this is our main source of income it has been an exciting development for us. We hope it will also help bring new visitors to Coigach in 2009.
In December we were delighted to learn that we had been awarded funding from the Moidart Trust to help establish an outdoor garden and fruit orchard. Will we have the first orchard of native Scottish apple species in the Highlands?
Whilst we've been busy with all the above we have also been working hard planning the main building. A great deal of attention is being paid to the design and how we can use local materials and renewable technologies wherever possible. We will only get one chance to do this and want to make sure we get it right for our business and the local community. All this has to be done within the tight financial constraints of our budget and any funding we can attract. Unfortunately, as many of you know, however well organised we are, timescales are also dependant on when we receive decisions from the local authority and funding bodies.
We are disappointed that there will be no main building to open this year but we're looking forward to welcoming the community and visitors to our indoor and outdoor gardens this summer.
Thanks for your many enquiries and good wishes which are appreciated by us. Please feel free to get in touch if you would like more information.
Alison, Di and Julie

Friday 13 February 2009

We have added photos of how our growing house was constructed


We have some photos of when Colin, Di and Allan put up our Keder growing house in the cold and wet weather we experienced at the end of October/beginning of November.


The Garden is coming along - the fencing is nearing completion, as is the access road. Once those jobs are finished we start planting the shelterbelt - 1200 trees! The planting plans are coming on and Di can't wait to start work in the growing house.


See our gallery for more photos.