Shadow the cat remembered at Inverness Botanic Gardens
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The death of the Highland capital’s beloved Botanic Gardens' cat Shadow was a “devastating” blow for staff and visitors alike.
But the city’s favoured green space has a new feline friend in the form of Ginger George who has taken up the mantle of making everyone feel welcome.
Facilities manager Ewan MacKintosh told the Inverness Courier about the new addition, who unlike Shadow, has a bit more of a nomadic presence around the gardens than his predecessor who was almost a permanent resident.
Ewan said: “His name is Ginger George but he is not quite here as often as Shadow was because he doesn’t live here like Shadow used to.”
Speaking about Shadow’s death earlier this year, he added: “Everyone was pretty devastated.
“Everyone loved Shadow.”
A memorial to the beloved animal now features on the new glass house in the gardens as the old structure from the 1930s – since taken down and replaced – was one of the moggy’s favourite haunts.
And with “haunts” in mind, the Botanic Gardens staff are looking forward to welcoming guests to a Halloween-themed event starting today.
Night at the BOOtanics is the biggest event in the garden’s calendar and will see spooky lights and scary characters spread throughout the Bught Lane venue.
Ewan said: “We’re going to light up the garden with scary lights and have people dressing up in Halloween costumes.”
Meanwhile, now that the glasshouses have been built, they are in preparation to plan what’s going on in them. And another future project for the staff is to look at installing a kitchen so that adults with learning disabilities can learn to cook and expand their knowledge on what they already know about food preparation.
Ewan said it is part of an ongoing endeavour to make sure people keep coming back as well as attracting new visitors to different events that may excite or interest them.
One such other event that proved a hit was the recent Jurassic Live.
Youngsters were encouraged to come to the Botanic Gardens and hunt for dinosaurs while also looking at different educational posters on the different dinosaurs.
Ewan said the team hope that the children that come to these events will also gain an interest in gardening.
