Ruth and Philip bought 2 Templelands in 2008. Ruth and Philip love old houses and gardens, spending many possibly most weekends exploring them in and around the locality, and gardening, in between restoring their home, listening to old music and eating delicious food, occasionally home-grown, if the slugs and snails and harsh weather leave anything for them.
They also share a love of the new actually, contemporary music, modern architecture, and much more.
Ruth founded the Scottish Gifts Company Couthie. Her first Couthie idea was Humorous Scottish Greeting Cards – aka Couthie Cards, and this has gone from strength to strength with ranges like Dinnae Fash and Scotland Mapped Out most recently London Mapped Out.
That was then, as she sold the brand mid 2016, now spending her time making and selling locally grown flower arrangements in between volunteering at Amisfield, one of many gardens locally that are worth visiting and open all year round.
Philip has worked in the environment field for the last 30 years, at Newcastle University, Exeter University, then with Scottish Natural Heritage and subsequently as a consultant in a variety of areas and disguises, a bit of Swiss Army Knife – so much so he has his own show coming out soon on BBC4, well not really. He is a dab hand at building information rich websites (and very fast) having cut his teeth developing a number of imaginative tech startups, but he’ll do anything for a fee.
Philip wastes far too much of his valuable time trying to defend the local Dunbar Conservation Area from inappropriate or daft development and somehow also has found time to support dozens of projects and community organisations over the years, though he specialises in helping out troubled ones, where there is a management challenge, a problem to be fixed, or just a business process improvement needed.