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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| bashing |
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| drilling |
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| 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
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