Why working with the community and supports eduction teaching traditional craft skills is important to us.

Woodpecker Joinery was founded in 1994 by Christopher Waltho. Chris completed a woodworking apprenticeship after leaving school with a local joinery company. With the ambition to create and manufacture his own products, he set up a small workshop at his mother’s smallholding in Bramshall, Staffordshire. Over the years, the company has grown steadily concentrating on manufacturing greenhouses and later expanding into a diverse range of garden buildings. Along the way, the company has benefited from employees born from our apprenticeship programs and involvement in university placement programs which has been pivotable to the success of the business.

How we established a relationship with Highgrove Gardens and what that entails

At the Highgrove Gardens, we installed bespoke cedar greenhouses and cold frames. We used our previous experiences of making bespoke greenhouses and worked around the constraints of the foundation and walls of the previous greenhouses to ensure we preserved the overall appearance of the area. The buildings were manufactured at our workshops which we then installed and commissioned. A memorable part of this project was the enhanced the timber detailing we created within the greenhouse to represent the heritage of the buildings surroundings. We now take responsibility for the annual maintenance and service of the greenhouse to ensure they achieve a long service life and continue to provide the most effective growing space possible.

What we have provided the Foundation with

We have provided a Bespoke greenhouse to The Castle of Mey to be used as a peach house in 2022 and in 2023 we provided a Bromley greenhouse to Barley Court. We have also provided coldframes to Dumfries House.

Our donation to Barley Court

We decided to donate the greenhouse at Barley Court to help support the programme of work the Foundation has planned for traditional crafts on the Highgrove Estate. After gaining an awareness of the Highgrove gardens future involvement with the King’s Foundation we thought the greenhouse is the perfect resource to diversify and enhance the learning of people involved in the education and training programmes.