To celebrate their 25th birthday year, Inverness based garden centre Simpsons has donated £25,000 of garden centre vouchers to garden projects across Inverness, the Highlands and Aberdeenshire.
After receiving nearly 300 applications, the significant £25,000 ‘Garden Project 25’ fund will be split between 114 school, charity and community garden projects.
The award panel at the garden centre were overwhelmed but extremely impressed by the quality and diversity of the many gardens either under way or in the planning stage, in the local area, making it an extremely difficult process to choose the lucky recipients.
Gardens projects which were awarded funds from the garden centre came from as far as Wick in the north to the Isle of Skye in the West to Fraserburgh in the East and Fort William in the South – plus everywhere in-between!
Marketing Manager Siobhan MacBean said “As we celebrate our 25th birthday year, it’s great to give back to the community which has supported Simpsons from the beginning. Being part of our community is so important to us and has been since the garden centre opened in 2000.
“We were so thrilled to receive so many applications from such varied and diverse garden projects. Gardens which have received funding include memorial and sensory gardens, outdoor spaces to help people with additional support needs and dementia, community fruit and veg growing to intergenerational gardens – where nursery and school children can learn from older and retired gardeners.
“It was truly inspiring for our panel to read about each garden which submitted an application. It was a very difficult decision for our team to decide on the final gardens which would receive funding. We all know how gardening and being outdoors is so good for physical and mental health and there are so many great projects out there. All of the garden projects should be very proud of the impact they are making in their communities”.
For the full list of successful garden projects, please visit: www.simpsonsgardencentre.co.uk/garden-project-25/recipients