History

It all started twenty five years ago with the selling of spare vegetables, bedding plants and fruit along with a small selection of herb plants and we've never looked back! The business has been nurtured over time and initially the main output was vegetables, soft fruit, salads and cut herbs which we delivered in the locality. Utilising a small poly tunnel and green house. We extended the range of plants available to sell and the success of this led to the opening of the Schoolroom in 1990.

With the opening of a shop selling herb related products and a small cafe serving teas and home baking we attained Scottish Tourist Board recognition and created a sound base for what we have now. With the ever expanding range of varieties and the rapidly increasing demand we erected two far larger propagation tunnels allowing us to increase dramatically the quantity of plants for sale. For a while we sold plants wholesale to other nurseries and garden centres throughout the North of Scotland.

The new tunnels also provided space for growing crops of herbs which we cut, dried and added to our own brand of muesli. Spoff was born. Our unique muesli, which developed from a version we had made for personal consumption for years, was the new enterprise to spring from Brin and with development over time.It split off in 2000 to form Spoff (Scotland) Ltd. and moved to a factory Ross-shire. In 2009 the business was sold and is now operated from Laurencekirk. The latest project saw the opening of the Fine Food Shop in June 2004 selling speciality foods and local produce.

25th anniversary update:

Following the sale of Spoff and the particularly hard winter focus is on the continuing increase of plant production and we are introducing some new plants to our display, dispite the demise of one of our polytunnels. Firstly we have started to stock Heather plants, grown in the North of Scotland, by a social enterprise firm - Solstice Nurseries. We also had some bulbs in flower early in the season and we will have a selection of herbacious and alpine plants to complement our range of herbs and wild flowers, throughout the summer.

The Schoolroom and shop will be open from Thursdays to Mondays this season and inside we are continuing to carry stock from most of our favourite suppiers, including Ness Soaps, a local social enterprise company based in Inverness. We have a new Informationm Point - which is building all the time - and as well as our £5.00 Monday lunch we are offering a "re-fueling" menu for cyclists and overnight parking for motorhomes.