A garden in the making and plant multiplication

In the high wall behind the harbour station platform, where expectant travellers to France once disembarked, is a faded wooden door that hasn’t been opened in years. On the other side of the door is something that looks almost like a ready-made garden. It’s all a bit Harry Potter… 

The garden essentially consists of a pile of large rocks with some plants growing on and between them, then outcrops of rock bedded in the shingle and beyond those clumps of sea kale spreading in a rather pleasing drift towards the sea. (Last week I called it sea cabbage, but this time I’m getting it right. Kale.) Oh, and there’s a rather random large bent metal mesh frame lurking by the rocks and a lot of old plastic bags and other rubbish. 

 

We surveyed the scene and discussed what to do to make this unexpected area look good and become useful. Obviously the rubbish needs to be cleared but the rock is weighty and a machine would spoil things. So we decided to clean up and then take stock and maybe balance the look of the rock by adding more plants and some strong structural or sculptural elements. You see, there are magnificent opportunities for you sculptors, engineers and people with an eye for this kind of thing. 

 

We might also create a pathway and/or patterns in the shingle. Then we will have an interesting, attractive area, a talking point for the way nature has behaved between the wall and the beach when given a few rocks and left to its own devices – and a sort of bonus garden area in the raw. 

Having made that plan on Monday, we started the exciting business of gathering seed and digging up plants from the specimens on the railway line. Exciting because, after a lot of talking, exploring and planning, we got our hands in among the plants for the first time. Seeds were gathered from: 

Plantago Lanceolata- Ribwort Plantain
Verbascum Thapsus- Great Mullein
Hypericum Perforatum- St. John's Wort
Lagurus Ovatus- Bunnytail Grass 

Impressive that we have the common names and the Latin names for precise identification – and they are so poetic. We also have our very own ‘nursery’ now, where we’ve lovingly placed the transplants, including rock samphire, in the hope they will thrive over winter to be planted out next year. So it’s a nail biting week to see whether our infants survive the uprooting experience and the weather as Folkestone basks in the hottest days of the summer.