No butts? DIY store Wickes' gift boosts water-saving efforts at Inverness Botanic Gardens
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A generous donation has boosted Inverness Botanic Gardens’ efforts to become as sustainable and environmentally-friendly as possible.
The DIY home and garden retailer Wickes gifted the city’s green haven four new water butts to help recycle rainfall and ease its reliance on local mains water supplies.
The water butts will collect over two hundred litres of rainwater each for use across plant beds.
High Life Highland’s horticultural trainer Rona MacFarlane said: “Wickes have been very generous to Inverness Botanic Gardens through the years, and have been particularly strong supporters of the GROW Project.
“The ‘GROW Project’ has around 50 people involved on a weekly basis, and we share thoughts and ideas about being happy, productive, and sustainable.
“Long-time GROW gardeners Carol, Michael, and John are over the moon with the four new water butts as a means of sustainably collecting and recycling rainwater for the project.
“Each water butt has a 210-litre capacity – that’s the same as about 140 orange juice cartons!”
GROW stands for Garden-Recycle-Organics-Wildlife, with the project providing a sympathetic environment for adults with learning disabilities.
Through the project, horticulture therapy delivers training and work experience which goes towards improving trainees’ levels of independence, social inclusion, health and happiness.
Rona continued: “In the last few years, Scottish Water have issued water scarcity alerts for parts of the Highlands, so we have had to change our gardening techniques to be even more sustainable.
“Collecting and reusing rainwater is one of those ways.
“Currently, the new water butts are part of our new-build educational classroom and we encourage everyone to consider future-proofing by saving water in this way – water butts can be easily retrofitted to existing drain pipes for which Wickes have many options to choose from.
“We have positioned one to display good practice to our visitors, and another for our vegetable patch which, as well as rainwater, is filled with nettles to create a nutritious ‘tea’ for courgettes, tomatoes, fruit trees and roses.”
Inverness Botanic Gardens has been actively revising their garden-wide practises to factor in climate change and a reduction of carbon footprint.
One of these techniques includes No-Dig, which reduces watering needs and carbon release by maintaining and continually improving the soil structure with mulches.
By doing so, rainwater collected from the Wickes water butts can be more relied upon going forward.
Aiden Wiseman, operations manager for Wickes Inverness, said: “I’m glad to hear the volunteers are so thrilled with their donations. It gives a real sense of satisfaction to know that we at Wickes are helping out in the community.
“Each Wickes store has an annual budget that allows for donations to various community projects. This year alone, the Inverness store has donated to a number of different projects
around the Highlands.
“Any community project that wishes to seek donations just needs to contact the store and let us know a little bit about what the project is, what specific items they are after, and a few personal details.
“We have utilised our full budget for 2023, however the budget renews every January so will be open again for 2024. Please note that Wickes is unable to help every community project that gets in touch, but we always do our best to make a difference.”
Steve Walsh, High Life Highland’s Chief Executive, concluded: “High Life Highland is blown away by the kindness and generosity of local businesses in giving back to their community.
“The donation of water butts from Wickes is an important addition to the sustainability goals of Inverness Botanic Gardens and is highly appreciated particularly within the GROW Project.”
