On Monday the residents of Devlin Court sheltered housing in Stirling spent a sunny morning planting herbs in their new raised bed. There was a lot of excitement about the herbs, we included all the classics such as: thyme, rosemary, mint, parsley, sage and lavender but also threw in some new ones such as caraway, lemon verbena and winter savory. The lemon verbena was particularly popular and had everyone wondering who could be the first on to cook a delicious meal with it!
Planting the herbs. Photo: Linda Stuart, Cairn Housing.
The idea for the herb garden at Devlin came from a discussion between some of the residents following one of my initial workshops with the group where they highlighted that they would like to do more gardening in their grounds. So we were delighted when the project was funded by Cairn Housing (who own Devlin Court) through their Cairn Community Fund.
TCV Stirling’s very own Midweek Volunteers then stepped in and did an excellent job of building a beautiful and extra high raised bed for the residents. Here they are hard at work on their creation:
The proud team with the finished bed:
The herbs were cultivated by TCV’s Jupiter Wildflower Nursery at Grangemouth. Here they are, fresh in the ground:
Giving the new herbs a good water
We were also joined on Monday by Claire Mullan, a local medical herbalist who is going to return in a couple of weeks to run a workshop for us on how we can use the herbs medicinally.
All in all it was a wonderful morning of gardening and hopefully a few more exciting dinners will be had a Devlin court from now on!
A huge thank you to Cairn Housing Community Fund for your support in making this project possible and also to the TCV Stirling Midweek group for your excellent work on the raised bed, to TCV’s Jupiter Wildflower Nursery for the herbs and to Claire Mullan for your support and knowledge!
More photos from this project to follow!