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Saving the Garden of England

Grounds for wildlife

Are you looking to develop or enhance your school grounds for wildlife?
You may already have a wildlife area which needs attention or help with future management or want to develop your grounds with wildlife in mind.
Then Kent Wildlife Trust may be able to help you in a variety of ways. 

To find out more contact:

Julie Thomsett
Community Education Officer (East Kent)
Tyland Barn,
Sandling,
Kent ME14 3BD
Tel 01622 662012
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Walk and Talk

We will visit your school grounds and either recommend improvements and management for an existing wild area or suggest a way forward for developing a new wildlife area.
This will involve two KWT representatives visiting the grounds and providing recommendations. Visit to take approximately 2 hours.
Following the visit, KWT will provide a ‘Gardening for Wildlife Pack’, a brief report of the recommendations and details of further packages that we offer.
Cost: £125

Consultation Day

We spend time with children, staff and the wider community to help identify areas and features that they consider to be important to the grounds that are currently present or they would like to see.
This will involve KWT representatives spending time talking about ways of encouraging new wildlife into the grounds and how they travel around the landscape.  This will support the incorporation of ideas into a wildlife plan.

Biological Recording Day.

We will spend the day at your school and work with a group of children and staff to record the existing wildlife they have in their school grounds.
This will involve KWT representatives helping the staff and children in setting up the systems needed for biological recording and spending some time outside surveying, finding species to record.

Mapping the Grounds.

We will spend the day at your school and work with staff and children to map the grounds. This will allow you to know what’s there; we will identify the habitats, man-made features and note any restrictions to development. From this, we will facilitate the group in developing a plan for a wildlife area.
This will be a hands-on day for both staff and children, with KWT representatives leading the day.
Each of these days start from £500 per day

Helping wildlife in your garden

Our factsheets about wildlife gardening are available to download from our Gardening Factsheets page.

Funding for School Grounds

Below is a list of useful websites and publication which provide information on the types of funding available to schools and advice on filling in grant application forms.

Teachernet

Teachernet have put together a list of major funding sources for school’s outdoor learning projects.

Kent 4 Community

Kent 4 Community  is a website which provides an online search tool for finding relevant funding quickly and easily. The website also contains Kent County Council’s twice monthly newsletter gives information on the latest funding opportunities, forthcoming deadlines and the contact details of people who can offer funding advice.

Borough Councils

Many local borough councils coordinate their own grant schemes, you can find out more by visiting your local council website.
Maidstone Borough Council also offers good advice on completing application forms.

Taking Action

We may be able to help with special practical projects in your grounds, by providing a team to implement the work or providing advice as to how to tackle the task.
Cost: dependent on the scale of the project.
Development of maintenance plans £60

Click here to see one we did earlier in the year.

Making the News

Click here to go our page on the Making the News website.

Why not visit a visitor centre to get more ideas?

 
The Wildlife Trusts