Grow North end of season get-together last Saturday

04 December 2016

Last Saturday saw a very successful end of season Grow North get-together, when many of those, tutors and learners alike, who took part in the programme of gardening workshops and visits  which ran from April to November, enjoyed a social afternoon / evening in the convenient and comfortable surroundings of Glachbeg Croft.  We discussed how this year's sessions had gone, and pooled suggestions for a likely repeat of the project next year.  There was a light-hearted quiz, with traps for the unwary, to test what had been learned during the year, and pot-luck soup, salads and savouries, many using the contributors' own produce.  The three young gardeners of the future present found plenty to occupy themselves, and were models of good behaviour.

Thanks are due to TBI Director and Food & Growing Group convenor Julie Gibson, who worked extremely hard arranging the programme, taking bookings and generally guiding the project to a successful conclusion; to all the tutors, too numerous to mention individually, and to those who opened their gardens to visits in conjunction with the Grow North programme.

We also took the opportunity to bid an informally formal farewell to Agric, who has been deeply involved with TBI since its beginning and was a director for much of that time.  He has been a mainstay of Culbokie Garden, TBI's Potato Day, Grow North and all TBI's growing and gardening activities, and is now moving more or less permanently to Wales.  Fortunately he has agreed to do the vital job of bulk ordering for next year's Potato Day, and is training up two 'apprentices' to follow in his footsteps.  Many of us have benefited to a huge extent from his knowledge, experience and patient explanations and instruction.  He leaves with our very best wishes, and we look forward to seeing him when he returns to Inverness from time to time, as we know he will.

PM