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