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 11 October 2020
Surprisingly fine sunny weather for both of our gardening sessions this week, which meant we were able to start to get to grips with making our changes to the plot over the winter. We are following the ‘rule of six’, and are taking it in turns to come along, with some taking a half shift so that somebody else can visit later. The rain has filled up the pond in no time at all, and with the pond plants, is ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 4 October 2020
The Folkestone Docker Brewers, having made the ‘green’ brew from the Hythe scheme hops, thought to complete the hop cycle of life by bringing the spent hops back to the garden and putting them on one of our compost heaps. When having aged appropriately, the compost will be applied back onto the garden, perhaps onto the hops themselves. This week we were able to work on the garden Wednesday morning, but Saturday was a complete wash out, with persistent rain, ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 27 September 2020
This week has certainly seen a significant change in the weather which has also triggered a clearing of some of the summer planting and in with more winter and spring veg. The watering can did not get a look in this week as the showers and drop in temperature took a hold, and will do for much of the foreseeable weather charts. The tomatoes would struggle to ripen, and the winter squashes would not benefit from the cold and damp ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 20 September 2020
Now that the days are getting shorter, it is beginning to feel a little autumnal, and thoughts are turning to the last sowings of the year, harvesting and clearing away the summer crops, then getting all set for the winter months. However the weather keeps trying to hang on to the summer and we are still watering and watering when you might hope we would get some respite. It has been noted that the next time we plant the squashes ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 13 September 2020
Below is a summary from Ray, our resident beekeeper, of the two hives we have in the Community Garden. “A memorable year! As for the bees in the SAGA garden – a good year now comprising of 2 new honeybee colonies, a new local beekeeper now with a colony (Chris) but not one that has yielded any honey from our garden! In summary – a small colony overwintered in Whittersham near Rye and right near the lead singer of Keane’s ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 6 September 2020
Very excited this week to be picking our hops for the great Hythe Hops weigh in. The first of the ripe hops had to be picked on the same day and taken to a collection point. The next hop picking day for any hop plants in the scheme that were not ready, are to be picked in two weeks. We started late morning once the hops were dry from any morning dew, and it took three of us two hours ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 30 August 2020
The high winds continued to run their course at the start of this week, and so we have found the answer to our question about the viability of growing runner beans on the site – a big fat no, when for the second summer they were destroyed by the high winds in spite of all measures to protect them. So it will be dwarf beans or nothing from now on. A few beans are still standing, but looking very sad ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 23 August 2020
It has been a week of highs and lows. We are able to harvest quite a range of things each week, and are now fortunate to have regular visitors coming by to pick up seasonal and local veg, or just to see what is going on. We had the first of the celery this week. Most of the vegetables you grow yourself are a world away from commercially grown crops. They have real flavour, but where growing conditions are not ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 16 August 2020
It has been a very busy week, coping with the weather, watering new plants as well as the thirsty usual. Some of the gardeners had a glut of plums and greengages, which others were happy to make into Jam for sharing, thank you Theresa and Peter! Many of the squash and courgette plant leaves had mildew which makes the plants look pretty bad, but is in fact nothing to worry about, and does not harm any of the fruits. We ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 9 August 2020
Far too scorchio for us this week, it has been a struggle to hand water the plot, and to water it well enough. The brassicas have been checked again and again for pesky caterpillars or eggs, which means crawling around on all fours peering at small plants, but very necessary. The endives and lettuces got planted, as did Chinese cabbages and a few Romanesco, squeezed into the last available space. The runner beans are now showing plenty of flower and ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 2 August 2020
The problem with covering up the brassicas with mesh is that you become complacent and think to yourself that no harm will come to those plants nestled in there, until you take a look one day and discover that they were placed inside the covering with butterfly eggs already hiding on them, and not carefully checked so that all the leaves on several plants had disappeared, and the caterpillars are marching with speed towards the rest of the plants! There ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 26 July 2020
Now that restrictions are lifting and it is possible to go away or simply go back to work, it meant that the Wednesday morning session was quiet and many of our jobs on the list did not get done. However, we made up for it Saturday, with beginner gardeners, and a steady trail of visitors either coming to look or to take vegetables or cut flowers home. In the week, the parks department of the Folkestone and Hythe Council very ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 19 July 2020
Every session these days there is something to pick, this week was salad leaves, the first of the dwarf beans, beetroot, courgettes and summer squashes, along with the last of the spring onions. The sweet peas are producing more and more flowers, as are the zinnias, and now a few dahlias. We are always pleased to see any visitors on our Wednesday and Saturday morning sessions keen to take produce home with them, and have had reports of how flavoursome ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 12 July 2020
An executive decision was made in the week to meet up and work on the garden on Tuesday instead of Wednesday when it was super soggy. We might be a great working team but we do not enjoy being wet, and so please bear that in mind if you were making a trip up to the garden on either our Wednesday or Saturday morning session, that we do not work in serious rain! Saturday in particular was a very sociable ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 5 July 2020
The Wednesday morning session was spent propping up leaning plants and cutting off wind burnt and shredded leaves, the condition of the garden was surprisingly better than was thought, although it seems we have more windy days to follow. Saturday morning was a washout, rain is great and we really should not grumble but the timing was not good! This week we have weeded inside the cloches, planted beetroot, a random tomato plant, and the last few dwarf beans for ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 28 June 2020
A week of far too much weather seems to have been the theme, going from one extreme to the other; however the rain was most welcome and saved us having to water at the end of the week, hooray! A busy Wednesday morning, with many visitors to the garden, either having a look around, or coming to pick up some vegetables or flowers. The sweet peas are starting to come quite fast now, and it is important to pick every ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 21 June 2020
You will not be surprised to hear that we have run out of space in the garden again for everything we are trying to grow! When the onions came out last week we planted up the ground with runner and dwarf beans, soy beans, lettuces, cucumbers and leeks. We have no idea where the rest of the lettuces, kale, beetroot, purple sprouting and chicory will go as yet. With any luck we can squeeze some into a couple of spaces, ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 14 June 2020
The onions have toppled over, a sign that they are ready to be lifted and dried, and once done, the ground was covered with the last of the saved compost and planted up with more beans and cucumbers. We have put extra windbreaks along some of the beanpoles to give the beans as much chance as possible. We planted a few basil plants, kale, and Brussel sprouts, all kindly donated by the new mayor of Folkestone, Michelle Dorrell. Michelle is ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 7 June 2020
No more procrastinating this week, and glad to report that jobs like repairing the flat wheelbarrow tyre and finishing the post wiring is under way and getting done, always satisfying to complete tasks that nag at you to get them finished. At last the weather has broken and the much welcome rain will do wonders to loosen up the soil and bring long awaited relief to plants that we choose not to water, in preference to those that really do ...
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Sandgate Community Garden: Update 31 May 2020
This hot and dry weather has brought things on really fast, and it is a race to get as much as possible into the ground and keep up with the watering. It is very interesting the differences between the planting zones we have in the garden. We have the very fine silty, sandy soil up against the wall, where the water rolls off the surface and runs away; we have some zones that have not had any compost added, or ...
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