A hidden gem nestled between the River Spey and the Moray Coast; The Gordon Castle Award Winning Walled Garden is described as one of Scotland’s best kept secrets. At almost eight acres in size, the garden’s plants and flowers are nurtured and then harvested by a team of dedicated gardeners that extract the essential oils to create Gordon Castle Scotland’s all-natural hotel amenity collection.
Gordon Castle Scotland have recently revamped their hotel amenities collection with an increased emphasis on sustainability. The range has a beautiful new look and ensures that each product brings the handcrafted beauty of the garden to your guests’ luxury hotel suites- without costing the earth!
Tell me about Gordon Castle Scotland’s new hotel amenity collection redesign.
The redesign comes as part of an environmental sustainability campaign- ultimately, we’re all about the garden. The garden itself is an earthly thing that’s happening on a constant basis, and we want our hotel amenities range to reflect this.
Looking after the garden, and therefore the earth, is very important to us. We have a team of about 10 full time gardeners- and in the summer, we can have up to 50 volunteers that come and help tend to the garden. Gordon Castle Scotland is passionate about sustainability and using as much of the garden’s produce as possible. All their packaging is biodegradable or made from recycled materials. Any packaging that is used on-site, is put in the garden’s composter, broken down then added to the soil to nurture more growth and thus continue the cycle.
We also thought it would be nice to raise the bar and go that little bit further in terms of the luxury aspect with our ‘stylish new look’ hotel amenity range. We very much hope that hoteliers will jump on board with us and our sustainability journey.
For us, it’s all about finding the best compromise between price and sustainability- prices tend to go up as companies opt for plastic alternatives. It’s important to us that we essentially use the mound of post-consumer plastic already available before it reaches the ocean.
In addition, we recognise that particularly post-Covid- there is still a need for single use products in hotels. Our improved amenity range stands to balance concerns around hygiene, environmentalism and quality simultaneously.
Tell me about the different scents in the hotel amenity range.
Within the amenities we have the favourites from the three scents ranges. The shampoo and conditioner are from the Herb Garden, the body lotion is from the Flower Garden and the soap and body wash come from the Orangery. We’re all about locality and quality- and this carefully chosen combination of amenities is an amalgamation of the best.
What we’ve then got are two looks- with the same luxurious product in each range.
The 30ml size we call our luxurious ‘Walled Garden’ with a more natural look and using all post-consumer material.
The 40ml size which we call the ‘Gordon Castle Scotland’ ultimate luxury range’, to dazzle using post-consumer or recyclable material.
The luxurious Walled Garden range – 30ml amenity bottles & 25g soap bar
The Gordon Castle Scotland ultimate luxury range – 40ml bottles & 35g soap bar
Tell me about the production/distillation process of your hotel amenities.
The natural essential oils for the luxury amenities are extracted on site.
The garden exists as a continuous, sustainable cycle in which the by-product of everything that we have produced ultimately goes back in- creating not only a beautiful place to visit, but a sustainable and functional product.
I regularly keep our community updated with posts about the garden on social media which I think is really important- we are all essential ingredients that go into the making of our products.
Follow Gordon Castle on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook to stay up to date with what goes on inside the Walled Garden.
