Married in the Garden

This is the first wedding held in the garden and it was a huge success.

It was a fantastic summer day and all the volunteers had worked harder than ever to ensure the garden was looking at its best.

The bride and groom were from Stranraer and the service was conducted by the Leswalt minister Rev michael Sheppard.

A marquee was erected to shelter guests in case of rain and villagers joined in the celebrations after the wedding and were offered glasses of champagne.

It was a wonderful setting for a relaxed, informal event and we would be happy to hear from any couples interested in using the setting for their wedding in the future. There is no charge. We simply ask a donation to the project.

CSV Give and Take

CSV Give and Take volunteers have been helping us in the Wetland Garden recently by clearing beds, removing redundant tree stakes and carrying in stone for the next stage of the dry stone walling.

They have also helped the Woodland Trust by clearing rubbish dumped in the adjacent Aldouran Wood and intend to come back and help us again.

Galloway Association of Glasgow Grant

We needed a reprint of our information leaflets on the Wetland Garden and Woodland Walk so we applied to the Galloway Association of Glasgow for a grant.

We were successful and in the photographs you can see Sandy and Anne Rankin visiting the site to hand over the cheque to the children of the Aldouran Wetland Watchers and our regular adult volunteers.

Fishing for Knowledge

The 'Fishing For Knowledge' project is run by a charity based in Carlisle who travel across Dumfries and Galloway Region working with schools to educate children in the life in our water courses, ultimately leading to an interest in angling.

They brought two local primary schools to us and introduced them to the life in our ponds and the Aldouran Burn.

The children all thoroughly enjoyed themselves and the instructors later described our project as 'a little gem'.

Stranraer U3A Visit

The Walking Group of Stranraer U3A came for a walk through the wetland and woodland on a lovely may morning when the damsel flies were beginning to appear in the wetland and the wood was alive with bluebells.

A group from U3A visited us later in the summer to learn dry stone walling from Hugh Sloan who was rebuilding some of our walls.

This was a worth while exercise and helped towards the ultimate goal of replacing all our wood with stone.