Inverness Botanic Gardens and Café could harvest a duo of awards!
The team at the Inverness Botanic Gardens and Café could scoop a brace of awards with the news today that they are finalists in the 2025 Highlands & Islands Thistle Awards.
The Inverness Botanic Gardens and Café is a finalist in both the ‘Visitor Attraction of the Year’ category and the ‘Climate Action Award’.
Operated by High Life Highland, this popular city attraction has been welcoming visitors and locals since 1994 becoming a mainstay of Inverness life with its vibrant and inclusive atmosphere. There are four key elements to the facility including beautifully landscaped gardens for people to enjoy, a Highlands-wide nursery supplying over 1,100 floral displays, Café Botanics serving fresh food with local ingredients – including some grown on site – and the GROW Project which is a horticultural education programme for individuals with additional support needs.
Ewan Mackintosh, Facilities Manager at the Inverness Botanic Gardens and Café said: “We are absolutely thrilled and extremely proud to be finalists in two categories at the Highlands & Islands Thistle Awards. We are a team of 19 core staff and 32 volunteers and every single individual has played a key role in this success.
“Climate action is right at the centre of everything we do here – this is not a tick box exercise for us. The café uses ingredients grown on site and we are developing a fully circular food model with food and packaging waste composted right here then turned into soil with which to plant more food.
“Our raised beds are made from recycled marine and agricultural plastic, we collect rain water and use peat free compost, the site is heated with a biomass boiler and over 1,000 hanging baskets are returned to us every autumn for use again the following year.”
The industry led Highlands & Islands Thistle Awards celebrate achievements and recognise excellence within the tourism sector. Finalists are announced in the summer with winners crowned at a gala dinner in October.
Chair of the High Life Highland Trading Board, Michael Boylan commented: “The entire team at the Inverness Botanic Gardens and Café should be rightly proud of making it to the shortlist of two categories at the Thistle Awards. They excel in providing a welcoming, inclusive space for everyone who visits and their green credentials are second to none. We wish them good luck for the awards.”
