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 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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Sandgate Community Garden: Update 17 September 2023
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 17th September: Green hop beers created by Docker brewery and Hopfuzz brewery are coming. It has been an extraordinarily quiet week. There are no seeds to sow for anything that needs to grow outside, and so we are just repotting a few seedlings to bring them on for when there is room to plant them, to include wallflowers for some early spring colour. Much of the plot is full of flowers from the ...
Sandgate Community Garden: Update 10 September 2023
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 10th September: Scorchio. This week the weather has been scorchio! It has been far too hot to feel like doing anything much, but no matter what the seedlings, celery and celeriac still need watering. We decided to work in the garden earlier than we normally do, and finish by 11am in order to be out of the midday sun. The rest of the tomato plants with blight got removed and composted, and work ...
Sandgate Community Garden: Update 3 September 2023
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 3rd September: A fabulous day and the weather was just perfect. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who donated plants for the Sea Festival and to everyone who came along on the day to support us either to buy plants/vegetables, or to help out at the stall or with setting up and clearing away – it was a fabulous day and the weather was just perfect too. It was a great ...
Sandgate Community Garden: Update 27 August 2023
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 27th August: It is all happening in Sandgate. Crikey! It is all happening in Sandgate. The Sea Festival weekend is upon us at last, yet by the time you read this newsletter it will probably be all finished. We have been keeping a close eye on the weather, and although there were showers on Saturday, it did not spoil the evening firework show marking the start of the festival. We now know that ...
Sandgate Community Garden: Update 20 August 2023
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 20th August: The slugs and snails are on the march, and the hunt is still on for hornets. We had a massive 22.9mm of rain on Friday night, which is more than we usually get for most months. The thunder and lightning rip-roared about for a few hours which seemed to wake most folk up, but it did mean that there was no need to water the Enbrook Park garden on the Saturday ...
Sandgate Community Garden: Update 13 August 2023
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 13th August: Praying for decent weather for the Sea Festival. We are praying for decent weather at the end of the month for the Sea Festival because if it is anything like it was last weekend with waves crashing over the Sandgate Promenade, it will be a disaster. However, being optimistic as always and keeping everything as well as our fingers crossed, Sunday 27th August WILL be a perfect day! Sandgate-Seafest-Flyer-2023-web The Animal ...
Sandgate Community Garden: Update 6 August 2023
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 6th August: Finding where the Asian hornets are nesting, destroying them. There are times when you wonder if you should be careful what you wish for, having spent so long over the past few years going on about how little rain we have here in Sandgate. We now seem to have a plentiful amount and the hope is that the sunshine will be returning anytime soon! The rainfall for July was a massive ...
Sandgate Community Garden: Update 30 July 2023
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 30th July: Watching carefully for signs of tomato blight. It was surely tempting fate to mention the dreaded tomato blight in the newsletter last week, as the following day it was found in a group of tomato plants at Pent Farm. The tomatoes there are planted indoors as well as out, and in several locations. The affected plants were close together and in bush form, whereas the others are cordons with space around ...
Sandgate Community Garden: Update 23 July 2023
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 23rd July: Dwarf beans, blackcurrants, tomatoes, fungi and flowers. Considering the fact that many parts of the world including Europe are experiencing extreme heatwaves, it has to be said that cooler showery/windy weather has to be preferable, although not everybody would agree with that. The showers are so localised, that it can be raining hard at Pent Farm and Cheriton High Street, even at the top of Enbrook Valley, with the rain literally ...
Sandgate Community Garden: Update 16 July 2023
Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 16th July: Keeping your bananas well away from the beehives. Just as our newsletter went out last Sunday bemoaning the fact the rain was passing us by yet again, it started to pour down. We have had several substantial showers since. This weekend the winds have arrived with a vengeance. Apart from the interesting weather, the main feature of the week has been insects, from the good, the bad, and the (not so) ...
