It’ll be alright on the night

Last week, East Yard at the Harbour Arm still looked, frankly, a lot  like a junk yard - and I wrote that transformation needed to start in earnest. Now, after a hive of activity, East Yard is really beginning to look like an interesting shingle garden. So maybe it will be alright on the night.

I’m reminded of Henslowe, the hapless theatre owner in the film, Shakespeare in Love. When asked what should be done in the face of apparently disastrous events, he replies, ‘Nothing, strangely enough, it all turns out well.’ But how? ‘I don’t know. It’s a mystery.’

 

There was no mystery to the dedicated application and sheer hard work of the entire volunteer garden group on Monday evening, inspired as ever by Diane’s unerringly positive vision. And yet, there was no denying that a sort of mysterious alchemy took hold as we pulled on our trusty gardening gloves to heave trolleys, carry buckets and weild spades.

 

As one, we spread shingle around existing plants, filled a new bed, brought specimens from the nursery to go on display in the most appealing and informative way and positioned our found objects as structure. 

 

Some power of nature seemed to guide Wendy’s team to ease the plants into their new homes. Some magical inspiration seemed to guide our team to position weathered woden uprights as sculptural incidents and rusted railway bolts as ground patterns. We even found an ancient nautical lamp to use as a colourful maritime ornament. 

Apparent impossibilities were overcome as the air seemed to crackle with inspiration and creative collaboration.

 

 

 As dusk fell, we all remarked on how satisfying and enjoyable the evening had been, not least the sense of camaraderie. The Harbour Garden project is teamwork at its best. We’ve all learned a lot and we all feel a great sense of achievement. And I’ve just spotted a headline saying ‘The science is in: Gardening is Good for You’. 

Tweaking continues this week as we build towards curtain up on Friday. Watch this space for photos that reveal the garden ready for Friday’s event. The talk for the SALT festival is at noon in East Yard on 30^th September, close to the Harbour Arm entrance from the car park. Diane will be there and garden expert Frances Tophill, along with many of our volunteer team. Tickets from Quarterhouse.  

 

   

A cake, a saw, some planks and pile of shingle

Last Monday’s garden group meeting coincided with my birthday, which just had to be celebrated with cake and bubbly. The lovely folks at Steep Street café had made a fabulous carrot cake – but I forgot to bring a knife. 

 

 

Never mind, we are gardeners, we can solve practical problems - and Anja had brought a brand new saw. Yes, a saw, intended for cutting wood but, we discovered, adapts perfectly to cake. You can spot it on the table. So job done, cake and celebration duly forthcoming. 

 

 

 

 

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, all this mirth and merriment was just a brief prelude to the hard work of the evening. Some of us set to clearing debris large and small from the area of rock and plants that already seems like a natural maritime ‘garden’.

 

 

 

I have dubbed it the Harry Potter garden because it appears like magic behind a door from the old rail platform. Once cleared, the whole thing looked a lot better and will be improved in due course by the addition of more rock outcrops and other features. 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, all attention is focused on getting the East Yard area ready for the SALT festival and the talk about the shingle garden.

 

We want to include pieces of timber with the beautiful texture and patina of age, so as darkness was falling there was a parade of volunteers carrying planks and posts into East Yard, Chris and Louella bringing up the rear with a cart laden with metal finds that have decorative potential. 

Mitchell, who works with the Harbour Arm, also made the fabulous discovery of an old lifebouy on a pole. Such a cool accessory for a garden associated with the sea and Folkestone’s maritime links. 

We’re calling it a shingle garden – and yesterday a large pile of beach shingle arrived, so Mitchell and his team got busy. Distributing some around the existing plants that grow wild there, marking out beds and paths and looking at where we might position sculptural upright timbers all meant that our vision for East Yard seemed to take a great leap forward. But there’s still loads to do, so long may the dry, sunny weather last!

 

 

Next Monday’s meeting (26^th September) is at 5pm to get in the maximum work time before dusk. Anyone who has time to help during the following days, especially Thursday, will be gratefully welcomed. It’s all very exciting now. Contact Louella with any questions, either through the SALT shingle garden Facebook page or at louella@folkestonefringe.com

Beachcombing for brassicas

The regular beachcomber approaches their task with a sharp pair of eyes and a metal detector, prepared to probe gently. We descended on Folkestone’s shingle beach with hopeful hearts and strong arms, buckets of water and spades, prepared to start digging… and digging… and digging. 

 

Our evening had started with a planning meeting when Diane plied our group with tea and biscuits, then fully focused our minds on the deadline of 30^th September for the scheduled talk about our shingle garden, as part of the SALT festival events. 

The idea is to create some instant impact for a patch of garden in the soon to be revealed East Yard, close to the Harbour Arm entrance. So we took to the beach to seek treasure in the form of sea kale plants – a few handsome specimens that we could try transplanting. 

And our party did make a poignant image, trudging across the shingle as silhouettes against the early evening sky in the manner of seven dwarves going off to work, hi ho. 

 

Our mission was highly experimental because the knowledgeable Wendy  warned us that sea kale roots run extremely deep. When we started digging, we discovered that she was not wrong. However far down into the shingle and surprisingly pungent, earthy soil we probed, we could not find the tail end of the sea kale roots. Still, we dug up what we could and have planted them into an old wheelbarrow with fingers crossed. 

 

 

Is sea kale edible? Yes! The roots used to be eaten like asparagus in the spring and it became established as a garden vegetable in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. It was also served at some of those opulent dinners held by the Prince Regent at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. Oh and by the way, it’s Latin name is Crambe maritima of the Brassicaceae family. 

While some of us were on the beach, Julia and Anje turned their artistic skills to planting up a few containers, using specimens that we had previously transplanted from the railway line. They have thrived in our nursery and look just beautiful  in the adapted water butts that Chris described in last week’s blog.

Finally, a reminder that the talk, Shingle Garden, is in East Yard at 12 noon on Friday 30^th September. Book through the Quarterhouse website or on 01303 760750.

 

 

 

Some Visitors

With our regular blogger, Faith, away on holiday, I'm guest blogging in her stead this week.

So far, our garden meetings have been blessed with good weather. The sun has shone and the air has been almost still. This week, the weather didn't look so promising. None of us had any waterproofs and the sky threatened. Fortunately, the rain held off and we worked to the slow slosh of waves against the harbour arm as heavy mist settled over Wear Bay Road in the distance, the Martello Tower standing out just above it.

Mist hanging over town

It was an atmospheric evening that brought with it visitors. Liz and Jan of the Folkestone Harbour Ward Residents' Association, who have recently been working on their own wonderful garden project up on the Durlocks Bank, had heard about our “gravel garden group” and wanted to find out more.

Diane was more than happy to tour them around the site, explaining what the long term plans are and showing them the progress at our nursery.

Diane showing Liz and Jan our nursery

They were very interested to see what was going on, and shared our belief that community action can make a huge impact on the places in which we live. Their own recent project is testament to this, so do pay a visit to the garden at the Durlocks Bank if you get a chance. It's tucked up behind the western end of the Stade and now features a beautiful wall mural in addition to the garden space.

Returning to the nursery, we have been pleasantly surprised by how well our plants are doing. Early fears that they may not survive being moved from the ground and potted up seem to have been put to rest. Buoyed by this success, we continued with the hard but happy work of digging more plants out of the railway ballast, saved from destruction by the imminent construction work due to take place.

Lifting plants out of the railway ballast

We also discovered some wonderful new objects on site for use in the garden planting scheme. A couple of old water butts which Anja spotted were particularly striking and have now been turned into attractive planters after a bit of bashing and drilling.

bashing

drilling

water butt bottoms

The nights are really starting to draw in, so by the time we were packing away the light was fading and I couldn't get any good photos showing our progress. If you want to see how things are coming along, you'll just have to pay us a visit, or keep an eye on the blog for future updates!

Chris Poundwhite