Watering the Marsh

Kent Wildlife Trust successfully secured funds from Kent Community Foundation’s Little Cheyne Court Wind Farm Fund.

 

Kent Wildlife Trust successfully secured funds from Kent Community Foundation’s Little Cheyne Court Wind Farm Fund. The grant amount of £1,800 provided tools and funds for an irrigation system for the Marsh Community Garden, part of the Romney Marsh Visitor Centre. In June, a team of volunteers led by Liz and Louise at the Visitor Centre installed the irrigation.

Since then the impact on the vegetables, fruits and plants grown across the site has been remarkable. The old, very labour intensive, watering system (lots of watering cans!) has been transformed into an efficient irrigation structure. Our polytunnels are now producing a large number of crops and plants for our volunteers to sell at the visitor centre on site (Photos below).

The change in crop growth over time in a single poly tunnel. A broad range of crops are being grown, including runner beans, courgettes and butternut squash.

One of our volunteers had some specialist knowledge regarding vine growing, and the results have been rather spectacular (see below). The two photos were taken just 9 weeks apart! Who knows, we could be producing Cotes de Romney in a few years’ time.

Our Vine. Left: June, right: August.

Many thanks to Little Cheyne Court Wind Farm Fund and Kent Community Foundation for their generous donation, and our volunteers at Romney Marsh Visitor Centre for their amazing work installing the irrigation system.

Exciting plans are in the pipeline for our Visitor Centre at Romney Marsh, which will allow us to make even more use of the fantastic produce grown in the Marsh Community Garden, if you would like to be part of our Volunteers team down on Romney Marsh, please contact the Visitor Centre team, Liz Grant/Louise Pyke (01797 369487) or Dawn Champion (01622 662012).     

 

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Adonis blue butterfly, photo by Grant Hazlehurst
Grant Hazlehurst

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In this blog, we're taking it all back to our purpose – the ‘why’ behind Kent Wildlife Trust. Not our strategic goals and plans, but what wildlife means to us. Why do we care about creating a wilder county anyway?