Introducing our newest maker, Harvey, the man who makes our lovely chopping boards and who we are delighted to welcome to the Aerende community. In his own words:

Before being given a place at River Garden I was working as an apprentice electrician for a company based in Lanarkshire. My addiction grew and grew to the point of being thrown out of the house at the age of 20. Following a short stay in a sheltered accommodation unit, different family members took me in and helped me get healthier. At the start of July 2018, I self-referred to River Garden Auchincruive. It wasn’t until November 25th 2018 that I moved in though. As of now, I have been sober for over two years and am employed by River Garden as a community peer worker to help support guys as they go through their programme.

After being at RGA for around three months, my colleague Steph (Community Coordinator at RGA) who is a tree surgeon took the time to show me how to make different items out of scrap pieces of wood. (Coat hooks, tea light holders etc.) After making a small number of products and selling them at a small open garden event, my interest and passion for wood/trees really started to grow. Slowly but surely, we started to grow in experience and skills. In March of 2020 we moved into our workshop and started producing lots of different items. My favourite part about making the serving boards is probably milling the sycamore logs with our Alaskan mill. It's always exciting to take a slab off and see the lovely grain that gets revealed.