What’s growing this month?
We’ve cleared the polytunnel of winter salad and weeds and planted our tomatoes and cucumbers; the broad beans have been bountiful and our spinach and chard and spring onions have done really well on our produce stall.
The wildlife garden is flourishing – it’s our first year and we’ve had huge success with growing yellow rattle which should create a flower rich meadow because it weakens grasses to allow wild flowers to grow. We’ve got Caroline Ware’s hard work to thank for that.
It’s been one of the worst years in gardners’ memory for slugs and snails with all the rain that we’ve had. We sadly lost a bunch of our courgettes and squash planted just before a prolonged rainy patch.
On the plus side, we had our first ever Stream Walk plant sale at the end of April. The day was jam-packed full with stalls selling our beautiful homegrown plants and produce, local honey, and woodwork. There were also refreshments available and seasonal hot lunches. Our plant sales continue to go from strength to strength thanks to the hard work of Laura and a keen team of volunteers. We now have a new display table at the entrance of the garden with customers now coming in regularly to get their garden plants.
What else is happening?
We posted our planning permission application for our eco-build cabin this month. The consultation period ends on June 7th so fingers crossed that will get approved so that we can start work on fundraising and planning our next steps. (And if you’d like details of what we’re planning – there are drawings on the garden noticeboard or speak to Clare, Jules or Vee).
The big Tesco in Whitstable has a Book Club and in April it raised an amazing £575 for the garden which will be used to buy equipment for the children’s activities that are held regularly in the garden. Sam from Tesco came down in person to present the cheque to us.
We also had a bumper day at the charity car park at the Whitstable Junior School where we raised more than £300 and we’ve also been the beneficiary of the NGS plant sale who have given us part of their proceeds of £332. All of this money will be ploughed back into the garden infrastructure, as well as payment towards session leads for some of the many groups we now run.
Groups
Whitstable youth group – who we worked with last Summer – has a new manager. His name is Rob Yorke, and he visited SW on May 9th to understand what the community garden was about and discuss future sessions with us. They are keen to offer their young people further sessions at SW and are working with us to deliver these hopefully starting in June. More information to follow.
We are pleased to be running a series of work experience sessions with students from East Kent College. The students, who are aged between 17-22 years, come along for regular sessions to gain experience in all aspects of work in the garden; from weeding and planting, to sowing seeds, digging compost and learning to use tools safely.
And in the Bodgers shed at the end of the garden, we’re regularly getting 4-6 people coming to the Monday evening spoon carving group, and we’ve had four new people join us on our new Wednesday shed day. The long running Thursday morning group continues achieving some quality woodwork.
Coming in June
We’re going to be fitting our new water tap near the tea shed, on the weekend of June 8th when we’ll be hiring in a machine and recruiting volunteers to help with trench digging and barrowing of earth. We’re doing this with the help of Whitstable masons.
And we’ll be starting another series of sessions with the local Brightshadow group which works with people living with dementia.
We’ll be back with more at the end of June.
If you’ve enjoyed reading about what we’re up to and what we’re planning we can email you this newsletter. Just drop us a message: admin@streamwalkgarden.com
A friendly, inclusive outoor space in the heart of Whitstable 