THEY sit toasting themselves in front of the wood burning stove, cradling mugs of tea, quietly passing the time of day together.

Bryan Green and Ray Warner are the very picture of repose, despite the grenades post traumatic stress syndrome has lobbed into their lives.

For them, the Peace Garden at Minsteracres is truly an oasis and the Let’s Get Growing project running there a lifeline.Both are very open about the nervous breakdowns they have suffered since leaving the army they served, between them, for 56 years.

Bryan was in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Corp, while Ray was in 19 Field Regiment and later the TA 101 Regiment.

For 17 years Ray was also principal carer for his wife, who died last year after 42 years of marriage. That too has taken its toll on his fragile mental health.

The permanent state of alert his regiment lived in during their tour of duty in Germany during the Cold War was followed by a posting to Northern Ireland, where the incident that haunts him to this day happened.

Ray said: “My room mate was killed. He was standing on top of a bomb when they detonated it. I didn’t see it happen, but I can’t get rid of the image that’s stuck in my head.

“I had to go and sort his kit out to send home. When you are packing it up, you have to go through their mail in case anything needs seeing to – it was like digging into his private life.”

Today, the smell of burning has Ray looking for the source. A couple of weeks ago, it was the hot wires of a Hoover that had just been put away in a cupboard that taunted his demons.

“It will remind you of cordite,” Bryan says to him.

Ray agrees. “It puts me into a state of hyper-awareness,” he adds.

Ray had just returned from his latest stint at one of the three psychiatric treatment centres run by Combat Stress, the charity that supports veterans’ mental health.

“They teach you all kinds of strategies to help you cope with your day to day life,” he said.

“You live two lives in this game. On the outside you are smiley, but inside you are a wreck.”

Bryan’s problems began with his inability to settle happily back into civvy street. He missed the camaraderie of his regiment, but more than anything he missed the structure and the orderliness.

When he talks about one job he had, as a school caretaker, and the dropped rubbish, the dirty feet walking across the floor he’d just washed and the general level of disrespect, you can hear how it chipped away at his nerves.

“I had a nervous breakdown about seven years ago,” he said, “At the time Afghanistan was going off and I was seeing the young lads being brought home. I think the breakdown was partly down to the guilt I felt about being OK.”

Bryan had driven past the end of the long, tree-lined driveway leading to Minsteracres “a million times” before he discovered what lay at the other end of it. He fell in love with the Peace Garden the minute he set eyes on it.

Ross Menzies and Katrina Padmore, the horticulturalists who made their names at Dilston Physic Garden near Corbridge, launched the Let’s Get Growing project five years ago with one guiding principle - the natural world is a natural source of therapy.

That and the fact loneliness destroys many lives. Ross said: “People going through a life crisis or a mental health issue and then not able to work as a result … it isn’t long before they start to lose their confidence and their self-esteem.

“We need to rebuild that confidence to help them find their way back into society.

“We’ve had people here not able to go out or interact with the world outside, but then gone on in time to do their own voluntary work.”

Friendships are built within the lovely old walled garden, practical skills shared and trust nurtured.

The first thing the service users, six support volunteers, Ross and Katrina do each Tuesday and Thursday morning in the gaden’s oh-so-cosy wood cabin is put the kettle on and crack open a box of biscuits.

Whether they have learning difficulties, mental health problems or Alzheimer’s, there are no divisions within this mixed group of people. They each contribute to the conversation, and there are commiserations, questions or laughter – much laughter –- in response.

Having joined them round the big kitchen table, I’m asked to say something about my day. I say that the great privilege of being a journalist is being able to go places I wouldn’t do otherwise and getting to meet some of the very many interesting people tucked away in Tynedale.

The response, they have a joke for me. ‘Why did the journalist go into the ice cream parlour?’ Answer: ‘to get a scoop’.

One of the volunteers, retired headteacher Liz Hume, said by way of her contribution: “It’s the friendliness you feel when you step into the Peace Garden – it’s like a warm hug.”

Another, retired occupational therapist Veronica Bell, agreed and read out the poem she’d felt moved to write about this wonderful team of gardeners.

The feedback Katrina and Ross have had over the past five years confirms they are on the right track. The parents of one young woman with learning difficulties said the project had transformed her life.

One of the men with post traumatic stress syndrome said he was a different person when he was in the Peace Garden.

“And the wife of someone with Alzheimer’s said that it had been a lifeline,” said Katrina.

“She said everything had felt hopeless, that they felt everything had been taken away from him, but he could come here and be part of a social group and have things to do.

“Often, if you have a health problem, the first thing is that you start to become isolated, and that’s what we want to prevent.

“Here, people can come along and re-establish connections and be part of a community again.”