Current Staff

HOPE began life with a few volunteers and just two trainees. One of the early volunteer gardeners, Mark Barthorpe, helped to progress the garden from an overgrown plot to a working garden. Mark was the first employee of HOPE, thanks to a Lottery Grant, but he sadly died before his hard work could be fully realised into the garden as it is today. We have a memorial garden in Mark's memory at the entrance to our plot - if you have the chance to visit us, please take a moment to enjoy Mark's garden.

H.O.P.E. employs 1 full-time and 2 part-time gardeners who are responsible for the day to day organisation of the garden and all the training programmes. Our gardeners have wide horticultural experience, and hold the D32/33 assessor's qualification which allows them to assess the trainees undertaking the various gardening SVQ modules at the garden.

Richard Bruce is HOPE's full-time gardener; he started working at HOPE in March 2001. Richard is a keen gardener and has his own allotment in addition to all the work he does at HOPE.

Bernadette (Bernie) Dawks is one of HOPE's part-time gardeners, who started working at the garden in April 2005. Bernie has worked at the Walled Garden in Stracathro for several years. Before that, Bernie was a volunteer gardener at the House of Dun. Bernie's work at Stracathro involved her with some of Sunnyside Hospital's long-term psychiatric patients. Bernie is somewhat camera shy, but was snapped at a HOPE function where she won a fuschia in the raffle - how appropriate!

The other part-time gardener is Joyce Pearce, who joined the HOPE staff as a part-time gardener in 2006. Joyce has her own allotment, so she obviously loves her work! She is a keen singer and a member of Angus Folk - a group that promotes local and traditional music through practice and performance. Joyce has studied Shiatsu and Reiki for several years, attending courses in Japan as well as Britain.

Bernie and Joyce each work a 3-day week so they have a day's "crossover time" to update each other.

Past Staff

Debbie Lochhead was the Garden Supervisor until January 2005, when she left to pursue pastures new at Elmwood College in Cupar. Debbie gave almost 4 years to HOPE. Her enthusiasm and imagination let the project develop beyond our dreams and we are all very grateful to her. She still has contact with HOPE and supports our fundraising events, so we have not said a final goodbye to her.