Visiting the Achiltibuie Garden

Our Keder growing house at The Achiltibuie Garden is getting ready for the 2010 season.  From 29 March 2010, we will be open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays between 2pm and 5pm, although we are happy to show you round at other times if arranged in advance.  We split our time between the our office in Altandhu and the Garden on its croft site in Achiltibuie, so if you can't make the above times, please contact us to arrange an alternative time to visit.

The office is open from 10am - 4pm Monday to Friday and visitors are welcome to call in.  Most of our stock is stored there, although we carry a limited number of hydroponic growing kits and supplies at The Garden site.  If you have a shopping list, you may find it more convenient to call the office and order in advance.  Items can be collected from either the office in Altandhu where you can pay by credit card, cash or cheque or from The Garden in Achiltibuie where we can accept cash or cheque.

At the moment, we're busy installing some new hydroponic systems in the Keder growing house as well as building another two raised beds for soil-based growing, giving us 5 beds in total.  We are also working on the outdoor garden areas, planting up the fruit cage and vegetable areas.  It can be a bit muddy on the croft if it's been raining, but if you bring your wellies, you are welcome to take a stroll down to the shore: you'll see how our shelter belt trees are progressing as well as being able to have a look at our new orchard.

As the year progresses, we hope that you will see construction work starting on the building which will house our café and shop.  It's unlikely that these will be open until much later in the year, however, so please bear in mind that we do not have any facilities on site until construction is completed.

Inside the Keder house, you'll see hydroponics systems used to grow herbs, salads and edible flowers - some of these are growing all year and we've already started sowing for this year so that we have lots of lovely leaves and flowers for our salad bags.  We'll have these and our other crops available for you to buy when you visit, of course, or you can also find our produce in the local shops, Achiltibuie Stores and Polbain Stores.  We hope to have early potatoes ready by the end of May, with strawberries ripe for picking in June. Raspberries, tomatoes and cucumbers will start cropping in July, followed by courgettes.  Later on there will be Arran Victory tatties from our outdoor garden together with onions, garlic and carrots. Arran Victory is an old Scottish variety with a fantastic flavour and floury texture; it has a purple skin and white flesh and we recommend it for baking and roasting.  If steamed it makes a wonderful fluffy mash.

Power for the Keder growing house is supplied by a micro wind turbine which runs the pumps via a bank of batteries.  All the hydroponics systems are supplied with water from our harvested rainwater store.  If you are interested in running your own greenhouse without having to rely on mains services, it's certainly worth coming to see us.  We have spent a lot of time sourcing suitable pumps and equipment to be able to do this and are happy to talk to you about what we've done.

We don't charge for visiting the growing house and garden areas, but if you feel that you would like to make a donation to help cover the cost of your visit, you'll be able to do this at The Garden site.

We look forward to welcoming you!