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 21 April 2024
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 21st April: We must have pricked out more than three hundred marigold seedlings this week. We were all feeling quite optimistic last week that the weather had taken a turn for the better and it was going to get warmer. Unfortunately that did not last too long before we were back to showers and biting cold winds again, with no respite on the horizon for at least a week! We have the luxury ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 14 April 2024
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 14th April: All hands on deck and only time to chat if we were busy with a job as well. Things have picked up at a great pace this week with some lovely sunshine and warm days; we managed to get in two whole sessions at the garden. Where we used to have plenty of time to chat and pack away early if all the tasks had been completed, this week it was ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 7 April 2024
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 7th April: The rainfall for March was another massive number, 148mm. It continues to be wet and windy with a few sunny periods. We dodged the rain on Wednesday morning to plant out the early cabbages, beetroot, spring onions, and kohlrabi. Saturday saw the planting of the coriander plants and the sowing of many zinnias. The carrots and parsnips got sown in situ, being the only seeds we put directly into the ground ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 31 March 2024
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 24th March: Six Inches of Soil. Happy Easter! The clocks have changed and the Easter holiday season is upon us. We have had less of the wet stuff this week and temperatures are gradually rising. That, combined with longer daylight hours, means the seedlings are starting to grow even faster. This is of course a good thing – apart from the sycamore seedlings covering the plot which continue to plague us. We cut ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 24 March 2024
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 24th March: Unleash the ladybirds. We were lucky to be able to get along to our gardening sessions Wednesday and Saturday without being rained on although it seems to have rained for most of the other days. On Saturday there was a biting wind so that sitting still for too long pricking out seedlings was not to be recommended. However we did for a while so that the aubergines were potted up for ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 17 March 2024
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 17th March: Spring seems to have snuck in through the back door. Just about everyone is fed up with the weather locally, and so it has continued with cold winds, and frequent showers just to add to the already ridiculously high water table. However spring really has arrived even if it seems to have sneaked in through the back door. There are so many buds just about to burst and new things are ...
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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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