Sandgate Community Garden

Sandgate Community Garden, get involved!
Contact Leonie: 07840 138308 or leoniewootton2311@gmail.com

Would you like to be involved in the Sandgate Community Garden? New volunteers are always welcome, and the crops grown are shared by and with the community of gardeners. This is a volunteer project in the Enbrook Park grounds of Saga.

The Community Garden team are also involved in other projects around Sandgate and Folkestone, including “Incredible Edible” planters by the Golden Valley shops, in Fremantle Road Park, along the High Street and Esplanade.

You can follow all the seasons and keep updated with what is happening. Get involved in the community and learn new skills. There is now a new wildlife pond and are pleased to have 2 bee hives on site. Gardening sessions are run twice a week. Get in touch to find out more.

Follow the progress on Instagram and like or get in touch on Facebook.

Updates written by Leonie Wootton.

Sandgate Community Garden: Update 10 March 2024

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 10th March: Spring flowers are in full bloom and the daffodils are out. It feels like spring has been such a very long time coming, but with none of our gardening sessions cancelled due to bad weather this past week, we are beginning to think that spring may at last be just around the corner.  Apparently this winter has been the fourth wettest, and the second warmest since records began.  February was the ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 3 March 2024

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 3rd March: It is no surprise that farmers are reporting the loss of crops sown in the autumn. Start building that ark! It is no surprise that farmers are reporting the loss of crops sown in the autumn, and many fields are sitting under water. Even if the rain stopped right now it will be some time before the water subsides, becomes unsaturated and machinery can get back onto the land. Fortunately the ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 25 February 2024

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 25th February: There has been far too much weather going on this week. There has been far too much weather going on this week to be able to get on with tasks that need doing. The rain has been the main feature and the session for Wednesday had to be cancelled. It is all too easy to be negative about so much rain and probably need to reflect on how much our Napier ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 18 February 2024

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 18th February: The wild plum trees are out in blossom this week in the Sandgate Park. The wild plum trees are out in blossom this week in the Sandgate Park. Full of flower buds, you get to appreciate how precarious it is to be flowering this time of year and a small miracle that there are any plums on the trees at all in the summer. The weather can be so windy, wet, ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 4 February 2024

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 4th February: Taming the wild garlic and thinning the strawberries. It has remained dry going into February, and a little milder although with a wind chill it is sometimes difficult to believe that. The rainfall for January was a mere 45.9 mm, the driest month since last June. It has given a chance for some of the waterlogged areas to dry out a little. Not much around in the way of sunlight, but ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 28 January 2024

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 28th January: A real community event and a pleasure to share food which would otherwise have gone to waste. We have been lucky enough to have some pleasant sunny days when we have been working in the garden this week.   Cold with some heavy frosts, so we are still limiting how long we have been staying.   Two beds of broccoli from the summer were twisted out, stripped and composted.  They have worked extremely ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 21 January 2024

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 21st January: Cold weather, awards and the return of Disco Soup. The weather this week continues to challenge our perseverance as to how long we can manage to work in the garden before all sense of feeling in the fingers and toes disappear! We kept the sessions to just one hour which is fine if you are being active enough. In spite of the cold the rhubarb is starting to make an appearance ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 14 January 2024

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 14th January: It was all about compost this week. We have another month until we can start off the first of the seeds for the year, so most of our time is spent clearing, tidying and preparing for the growing year ahead. It remains very cold, not so much rain and happily a little sunshine. Some of the men from the Napier barracks came out to help us by moving yet more compost ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 7 January 2024

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 7th January: A definite sense of déjà vu. HAPPY NEW YEAR! There is definitely a sense of déjà vu looking back at the newsletter for this time last year. Reassuringly we are doing the very same tasks within the garden, but it seems that the weather patterns are also the same. High winds/storms, and oodles of rain. The rainfall for December was 87.2 mm; last December it was 88.6 mm. The month with ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 17 December 2023

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 17th December: We would all like to wish you a very happy Christmas. We are fast approaching the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year. This gives plenty of hope to know that the days from then on will become longer as we make our way towards spring and the start of the growing season for the new year. There have been some spectacular sunrises in Sandgate recently, mostly to warn ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 10 December 2023

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 10th December: An invite to speak at the Canterbury Climate Action Partnership Climate Action Festival. Still the weather continues to slow us down or keep us away from the garden with yet more rain. We did enjoy a little sunshine on the Wednesday morning session where we were able to barrow some fresh compost onto the asparagus beds, clear some leaves out of the pond, and begin to check the brassica patches for ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 3 December 2023

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 3rd December: The proud owners of a fantastic hot composter. December has arrived and it certainly fells like it has too with a biting wind and freezing temperatures. The rainfall for November was 183.6mm, so just as massive as it was for October. The clay soil at Pent farm is swimming in water except for where there has been plenty of compost added, but happily Enbrook Park copes with it all very well ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 26 November 2023

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 26th November: How is it possible that we are into the last week of November already? We have had a few dry days this last week, and a slight frost, so we are glad that the fleece is in place over the broad beans. How is it possible that we are into the last week of November already? A few more cold nights should see the last of the leaves dropping from the ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 19 November 2023

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 19th November: Noah weather for a community gardener. The consensus is that surely we should be building an ark instead of trying to tend the gardens. It has simply rained and rained and rained with little respite. Yet another planned compost run had to be cancelled due to the fact that the hired vehicle had apparently caught fire, so we ditched the company and found another that could provide us with the transport ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 12 November 2023

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 12th November: A full pond and shredded banana tree. The rainy season continues, and nothing got done on the Wednesday morning session due to persistent rain, again! We were due to go on a compost run that day too, which means co-ordinating the hire of a drop side truck, volunteers to help unload, as well as help from the composting farm to load us up with compost. In spite of the weather it ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 5 November 2023

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 5th November: Babet, Ciaran and Debi. Good grief!  It has to be said that we have had an abundance of interesting weather recently.  The total rainfall for October was 179.5mm, and it would not be at all surprising if we have had as much rain again during the first few days in November. Since our last newsletter we have been battered by storm Babet, followed by storm Ciaran and now storm Debi.  Needless ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 15 October 2023

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 15th October: Red/Green Hop and Greenstar. At last the weather has broken and is feeling a little bit more like it should in October. We have had a serious downpour of water in the latter half of the week and perhaps it will be the end of having to water the garden for this year. We can at least hope! However one chore has been surpassed by another as we now seem to ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 8 October 2023

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 8th October: We would certainly recommend eating vegetables from the Garden if you can. It continues to be dry again and many things such as celeriac, leeks, radishes, and salad leaves are trying hard to swell or put on growth but have to make do with their rations of water. The rainfall for all of September was a mere 28.8 mm and there has been nothing so far in October. There seems a ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 1 October 2023

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 1st October: Sorrel Soup and Hot Composters. How can it possibly be October already? Before we know it, the clocks will be changing again and the nights are drawing in even more than they are already. We have been lucky enough to have some fine days this week which look to continue into the next. Some plants are responding well to that; however, it means that the ground is dry again and some ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 24 September 2023

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 24th September: It can take 12 visits by a bee to pollinate a female flower. We were glad of the rain this week mixed with some gloriously warm sunshine. The shorter days have certainly made a difference to the growth rates, and with cooler temperatures, things are starting to slow down. The leaves of the squash plants are beginning to die back away from the fruits to allow them to harden off. We ...
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