Why we love Threave

Transcript

3 speakers: Dave; Chris; Helene

[Dave]
My name's Dave Thompson.
I’m Estate Manager for the National Trust for Scotland, based in Dumfries and Galloway here at Threave.

There's two components to Threave: there’s the garden and the nature reserve.
The whole estate is 1,500 acres, 65 acres of that are the gardens.
As a visitor, if you’re going up to the garden, you could be really lucky enough to see red squirrels.
The garden's an absolute haven for small birds. Come the spring, it's deafening -- the sound of all these small birds starting to get all their little territories together.
It's amazing; I love to see it and I love to hear it mainly.

Threave Nature Reserve is approximately 81 hectares and on Threave Nature Reserve is the Threave Landscape Restoration Project, which we're currently working on.
It's about restoring the landscape, not to what we think it should have been back in the day, but it's about adapting and changing with Scotland's climate.
It's not species-focused; it's about biodiversity -- the more biodiversity the better.
But it's a 100-year project.
I'm not going to see it through, but what I can do is help to lay the foundations of this project.
Getting nature closer to people; people belong in the landscape.
I feel really good about the fact that we're all doing this.
I'll never sit under the shade of some of these trees but at least I'll get to see and nurse them along.

I love Threave because every day is a school day.
There's never a dull day, so there's always something to learn, something new to see.
And since this project started, I feel like I've grown as a person.
My knowledge has increased and it's done me the world of good.

[Chris]
I'm Chris and I am the Visitor Services Manager for Retail and Admissions at Threave.
We have a café here, we've got the plant centre here and we've also got the retail shop.
What do I love most about Threave?
I love the views that we have from the visitor centre and the way in which the property changes and the garden changes throughout the year.
There's always something new and something different to talk to visitors about.

[Helene]
My name is Helene.
I'm a trainee here at the National Trust for Scotland School of Heritage Gardening at Threave.
The way they teach you here, to have a full experience of gardening, is that we learn to be gardeners in different areas.
There's the grounds, which have woodland, which have rock garden, herbaceous borders -- all these different areas.
Then there's here the walled garden, which is a 1-acre walled garden that is both productive and ornamental.
And then we have glass houses, which have a tropical atmosphere, temperate and cool.
So that way we learn all aspects of gardening and can be quite well-rounded gardeners -- that's the goal!

The School of Heritage Gardening had their 60th birthday last year and that's quite moving, because in fact when you’re cultivating the garden you're really aware that you come in after all these generations of students or trainees who went on to be professional gardeners.
And that's something that I find quite moving -- that we’re custodians of this place.
We're passing it on and then there'll be new trainees next year.

This bit of the garden tries to be productive all year round and grow as many things as possible.
We grow salads, cabbages, beans, carrots, lots of fennel -- the fennel is really good this year.
We try to grow all sorts of traditional produce but also experiment with new ones, and the central border there is just a beautiful flowering thing.

This garden has a shelter belt to protect it from winds and the Garden of Contemplation is a place where the landscape is open.
There's no shelter belt but there's a beautiful stone wall.
It opens onto the landscape around, the surrounding field, and it's a place that is quite quiet.
It's a bit hidden in the corner of the garden and it’s a place where there's a different atmosphere, so that people can have a quiet moment.

What I love most about Threave is that they help you grow as a gardener.
It's a human adventure.
You grow as a person, and it's because of your co-trainees who are taking this journey with you; it's because of the team here -- we have wonderful dedicated volunteers and we also have seasonals; and also it's because of the visitors -- the interaction and all the experience with the visitors.
So what I enjoy most is that you grow as a gardener but you grow also as a human being.