We’re very saddened by the passing of Jim McColl, star of the horticulture world in Scotland and a wonderful patron and ambassador for Trellis, who inspired us and supported us unstintingly. Jim instinctively understood the good that gardening could do for people and spent much of his life trying to share its countless benefits with as many people as he could.

In the words of one of our founding directors, John Davidson, Jim was, ‘A gentleman of huge horticultural knowledge, a heart as big as Scotland. Will be missed by many for his compassion and gentle manner.’

Long before we set up Trellis, Jim was already giving support to individual therapeutic gardening projects across Scotland in different roles whether on the board, giving horticultural advice, or promoting the cause to politicians, in the media and to the public, both in conversation or on our screens. The projects he supported included the oldest continually operational one in our network, Todhill Country Centre in Ayrshire, as well as others in Tayside, Perth and his home turf in Aberdeenshire.

When we invited Jim to be Patron of Trellis he embraced the role wholeheartedly and was a perfect advocate for the therapeutic power of gardening, whether via videos, newspaper columns, in keynote addresses and masterclasses for our conference delegates, and by simply embodying the good that gardening can do for people.

In 2017 we invited Jim to come to a prison, HMP Polmont, to bring a little stardust to the pallet garden exhibition we organised with Scottish Prison Service. He made prisoners, officers, and the CEO of SPS alike feel both quite at ease and a little bit special with the attention and sincere praise he gave to their gardening endeavours. His participation made everyone’s day.

One area of work in which Jim had a special interest was our Calyx Gardening in Every Care Home'programme towards which he and fellow trustees directed residual funds from Scotland’s Garden Trust. As I told him in a message this September, we’re finally close to being able to start the pilot for this work and we look forward to bringing the project to life in his memory early in 2025. We hope it will do justice as a tribute to him and his lifetime’s work.

Our kindest wishes to the McColl family and Jim’s many friends.

We are delighted to announce the return of our Annual Conference which will take place on 14th March 2025 at The Bield in Blackruthven.

We are busy working on the full programme and we will be able to share more with you in January.

If you are interested in coming along or sponsorship opportunities, please head over to our website for further information. 

Thanks to your incredible generosity over the past couple of months, we’ve been able to run meaningful workshops with Ayrshire Cancer Support, directly helping those affected by cancer. We’re thrilled to report that over a dozen patients took part, and their feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

We’ve also held our very well received autism awareness and gardening event, providing participants with practical tools to support people with autism in a garden environment. It was a wonderful opportunity to promote understanding and inclusion.

Trellis is proud to support a network of over 520 projects, reaching out to 14,000 individuals each week who face various barriers and disadvantages.

This is why we do what we do, and with your support, we can continue making a difference. Please consider donating today to help us expand our reach and impact even more lives. Thank you!