The Stovehouse is an 84 metre long Victorian greenhouse situated in the Ornamental Gardens at Auchincruive. When Gardening Leave started in 2007, the last thing I dared contemplate was what we would do in winter, but in 2 short, hectic years, we have established Gardening Leave and now we need to widen the scope of our therapeutic activity.
As the Stovehouse has not been used for several years, it is in need of some repair and thanks to the generosity of many supporters (see our Funders section) we are about to put scaffolding around the whole building, cover it to prevent further ingress of water and then re-glaze and re-paint it so we can use it even on the shortest, darkest days of winter for woodworking, painting, growing bonsai trees and much, much more.
We have received offers of help from serving personnel; Ayrshire’s local regiment the Royal Highland Fusiliers, the NAAFI, the Royal Engineers and many others and this will be a wonderful opportunity for today’s serving personnel who are tomorrow’s veterans, to work alongside our veterans – able, skilled and hugely resourceful people – all under the watchful eye of our clerk of Works, who retires in July after 41 years of service in the Army.
