COMMUNITY spirit continues to flourish in the Hillfoots, with Tillicoultry Garden Club digging deep to support the Devonvale Hall.

The group met with members of the committee responsible for running the venue on Friday, August 24 to formally mark the handover of two new benches.

They, along with local community councillors, gathered outside the hall on Moss Road for the official presentation of the seating, which will also include two plaques.

The decision to purchase benches for the hall was made as a nod to a Wee County organisation which closed five years ago.

The Clackmannanshire Horticultural Society was disbanded in around 2013, a move thought to be down to a lack of members at the time.

Eileen Armstrong, president of the Tilly club, said: "We came into being because [of] the Clackmannanshire Horticultural Society, which had apparently being going since 1835.

"They were the ones that ran the annual flower and vegetable show in the Devonvale Hall all these years, they basically had to fundraise to hold that.

"They closed because, it wasn't that they couldn't get the money I don't think, I think they just ran out of people volunteering to help."

They offered the funds to a committee that could organise a gardening club, and so the gardening group was formed in around 2014.

Eileen added: "We had these funds from the horticultural society and really we weren't using very much of them and they were just sitting in the bank account.

"We run on our membership money so our treasurer Maureen Hall had come up with the idea of us spending the money on two benches which would sort of commemorate the horticultural society."

The benches and plaques were officially unveiled by the community-minded group last week and offer lovely inscriptions.

One outlines that the donation is from Tillicoultry Garden Club thanks to funds from the society, while the other notes "a garden is a friend you can visit at any time".

And a special guest for the event was Margaret Stalker who had a long-standing family connection with the horticultural group, which ran annual shows for 150 years before it disbanded.

Tillicoultry Garden Club meets every two months, anyone is welcome to join, and it intends to organise two trips this season.

The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, September 19, in the Ben Cleuch Centre, on Park Street, and the guest speaker is Frank Kremer who will show alternate floral arrangements.

To find out more, contact the secretary on sheilamillar444@btinternet.com