An Aberdeenshire man has created an art project to help his community give the NHS a colourful reminder of how much they are appreciated.
Roy Kemp, from Portlethen, has carved the initials of the national health service into the hillside across the road from the Portlethen Medical Practice.
His work, which he carried out on land owned by his family, was originally meant to be filled with flowers for staff at the medical centre to see when going to and leaving work.
However the 29-year-old quickly found it difficult to secure any flowers for the display, an issue which he believes is due to an increase in gardening during lockdown.
And so to fill in the currently empty message for NHS staff, Mr Kemp is now appealing for Portlethen children of all ages to have a go at painting rocks to bring some colour to the project.
He has put out a bucket for people on their daily exercise to drop their colourful stones into, which he will then put in place in the hillside.
He said: “I thought it would be something nice to all the NHS Staff in Portlethen – they’ve kept me alive all these years so I thought the least I could do would be to give them a little thank-you as they come out of the car park at the medical centre.
“I had planned to put in flowers, but I naively thought that the garden centres would be screaming to get rid of stock because of the lockdown, and thought I’d be doing them a favour taking the flowers off their hands, but everyone’s at home doing their gardening right now so it’s hard to buy anything for love nor money.
“So I thought, well a lot of children are sat at home bored right now, why not give them something to do and help show our support for the NHS at the same time?”
Mr Kemp, an electrical engineer, added: “Kids can paint a stone with a love heart, or a thank you or whatever design they want, drop them off in a bucket next to the display and I’ll stick them on the hill for them.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to create a colourful, lasting tribute.”
