The Garden is Remembering Itself

From Victorian ornamental garden to living rainforest

Retreat

It begins with quiet, the kind that feels earned.

Mist on the loch. Dogs sleeping by the stove. A kettle steaming in a kitchen filled with old wood furnishings and comfy sofas. A place where meaningful conversations unfold and stories are told.  

Re-Inversnaid isn’t a hotel. It’s a lodge restored by hand and heart, now welcoming those seeking rest, reflection, and purpose. Whether you come for a personal retreat, a team gathering, or a leadership course, you arrive into space and into a landscape in transition.

This is not luxury as escape. It’s comfort with meaning. A place where you can disconnect and still reconnect with nature, to yourself and to something much larger.

Restore

This hillside once bore the mark of another vision: Victorian ambition. The ornamental garden that once framed the lodge was filled with imported species including rhododendron ponticum, azaelea, gunnera, exotic evergreens, all beautiful in design, but invasive and ecologically damaging. That’s where the work begins.

Over the past year, with the help of incredible volunteers, we’ve cleared hundreds of square metres of invasive plants, uncovering buried boulders, forgotten paths, and patches of native woodland trying to return. We’ve felled, hauled, chipped and de-constructed branches, creating many a dead hedge in the process! The truth is: regeneration starts with removal. Before we can replant, we must let the earth breathe again.

Rewild

We’re now beginning to see the rewards of this quiet revolution. Oaks, birches, and hazels are pushing up again. Native ferns are returning to once-suffocated slopes. The soil is recovering slowly,  one inch, one season, at a time.

But this isn’t about planting trees to offset a flight. This is conservation in action not one driven by the need for carbon credits. Our hope is to go further. To shape a place where future leaders learn from nature, not just about it. Where ecology is not a metaphor, but a mentor.

That’s why our leadership retreats and courses are built not just around rest, but around responsibility. Not just about personal growth, but ecological literacy.

We believe in regenerative leadership:

• That we must restore what we inherit.

• That good decisions grow from deep roots.

• That the land teaches, if we choose to listen.

  
  

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