The inspiration for a healing garden space at St Anne’s was inspired by the window in the church which depicts the Gospel story in Mark 5, where a woman with a haemorrhage seeking healing reaches out to touch Jesus. Her act crosses both religious and social barriers of the time as she seeks wholeness, and her faith is rewarded with healing and hope. The powerful image of her reaching hand from the edges of society has inspired a vision to transform the undeveloped garden area around St Anne’s church into a green healing space for quiet, prayer, mindfulness and for therapeutic gardening-both for individuals and for groups working to improve mental health and wellbeing.
Further inspiration came from the history of the church and the town. St Anne’s Church sits in the historic spa town of Strathpeffer, adjacent to the old pump rooms and pavilion for the spa. The church was originally built to accommodate visitors to the spa in Victorian times.
The vision is also to demonstrate good stewardship of creation and care for the environment the project will adopt organic gardening methods and will seek to increase biodiversity through a variety of planting across the grounds.
We were very fortunate to be awarded two grants, one from the Scottish Episcopal Recover and Renewal fund, and one from the Novum Trust. These enabled us to get the work started and to have plans drawn up. We are also very grateful to the Highland Community Payback team who have undertaken much of the heavy clearing work and continue to help with regular maintenance and projects.
Once the ground was cleared the next step was to install all ability paths and continue the landscaping work. We were delighted to be successful in our grant application to the Corriemoille Wind Farm Community Fund and the local Mackenzie New York Villa Trust. Their generosity enabled us to install the paths and for the shape of the garden to begin to emerge as you can see from the photos below.
The congregation spent some happy afternoons painting the fence- revived at intervals with tea and cake!
We were very pleased to welcome the Highland charity ” Partnerships for Wellbeing” who came and made a short podcast about the garden project, which you can view here.
St Anne's Episcopal Church 