My time as Head Gardener at the Inverness Botanic Gardens has been short, and the pandemic struck as I was still finding my way around the gardens. My career as a horticulturalist came relatively recently; after a period of teaching abroad I found myself back home rekindling my passion for gardening. I worked in a local garden centre and gardened privately before I was lucky enough to gain my current position.

The pandemic has left us short-staffed, but our small team has rallied around and helped each other to keep up the gardens, as well as the many other projects that we undertake. It has also allowed us to carry out long needed improvements such as painting inside the tropical house, not an easy task when open 7 days a week to the public.

I do miss seeing our regular visitors wandering around, as well as hearing the positive comments from new visitors, and look forward to being able to open-up to the public again soon. More staff have just been taken back, and we are busy preparing for that day.

We are a small garden based in the City of Inverness, which includes different formally designed areas of the outdoor gardens, a tropical house and cacti house which always receives much praise both for its variety of plants and its 2 levelled design. The GROW Project is also based here and their gardens are a great attraction for families as the children can run around the pathways and large lawn area. This lawn has successfully held garden festivals too, which we look forward to again, in the near future. An exciting new feature in development is an orchard to run around the outside of the walled gardens, so apple crumbles here we come!