Imagination, community spirit and the power of the sea

On Friday 30^th September, we launched our shingle garden to a curious public. The event was a viewing and talk, one of many events in the full and varied calendar of the Folkestone SALT festival of the sea and environment, which was held over several days and proved to be a great success. 

 

In bright sunshine, we enjoyed meeting our garden advisor, BBC presenter Frances Tophill. Frances grew up in Deal and now lives on the Devon coast. She loves maritime gardens and plants, so we benefitted from her advice and knowledge about some of our own maritime railway line specimens. "The garden looks really good – and I can see the potential”, Frances told us. “It’s taken imagination and community spirit to get this far, so do keep it going.” 

A good crowd foregathered and Diane Dever of the Harbour Arm and Folkestone Fringe led our tour to see first what I have dubbed the Harry Potter garden, beyond the old station wall.

Then we moved to the old station platform, marvelled at the variety of plants on the railway line and discussed how they might have found their way there. 

After sheltering from a sharp shower, we finally revealed our completed East Yard shingle garden and were delighted by the response. Many visitors seemed to have shingle or maritime gardens of their own, so were interested to pick up information and ideas. In general the space was declared fabulous and amazing, with much appreciation of the creative use of materials combined with the preservation of plants – and all gathered from the site. 

 

Bigger discussions about shingle and the Folkestone Harbour and beach ensued, led by coastal engineer Paul Brenton, who is involved in the harbour development.

Did you know that shingle is composed of silica, derived from chalk, and acts like a giant sponge to provide valuable sea defences?

 

“We’re blessed with huge banks of shingle in the south east”, explained Paul, “and there’s a movement from west to east, so the shingle on Folkestone beach comes round from Dungeness." 

 

It was Derek Jarman’s garden on Dungeness that fostered the idea for our shingle garden, so you could say that inspiration and ideas have followed the course of those beautiful, rounded multi-hued pebbles as they are tossed and thrust by the mighty power of the sea. 

Enough of this waxing poetic. Don’t miss the next blog entry for a properly brilliant actual poem about the shingle garden from eco-poet Chris Poundwhite. You’ll love it!

 

We made a shingle garden right here!

 

 

Finally, last Friday, East Yard was transformed from a junk yard to a usable space with food stalls and a shingle garden. In this first phase of our Harbour garden project, we had been true to our principles of using only site-specific materials.

The old railway lines could not be moved, so against a backdrop of them and the massive old station fence, we put on display the plantlets from our nursery that had been gathered from the railway line, spread shingle around existing plants - and used for decoration planted containers and objects foraged from the site. 

Mitch and Greg built a new wall of empty beer kegs. Folkestone trawler men lent us a net and rope. Louella wrote the plant names – common and Latin - on the fence and made some beautiful plaques featuring casts of the various specimens. Wendy positioned a wheelbarrow planted with sea kale.

The shingle garden talk as part of SALT Festival was a great success - a full report in the next blog entry. Meanwhile, enjoy these images:

East Yard before work started


Left side of the new garden with old timbers, metal screws from the railway lines and planters made from metal pipe casings with added wooden ends



Right side of garden with new bed, nursery plants and names