Sustainable wildlife and community gardens

Aim

Ensure gardens we maintain as volunteers are sustainable in the face of climate change & encourage both wildlife & community participation

Broadstairs Town Team aim to make our town an even nicer place to live in, work in and visit. Collaboration is key to that. It's all about Community working together.

In 2022 we celebrated our milestone 10th anniversary of working with the community for the community. 

We have won many community accolades and awards for the work we do, and work very hard to keep our gardens sustainable but thriving with small funding applications, sponsorship and plant donations from local people.

We have over 60 volunteers who are part of our Gardens Group. 

We maintain 8 community garden spaces in our town, and our focus going forward is the sustainability of all sites, to mitigate the effects of climate change, ensure all. gardens are wildlife havens and through on-going encouragement of a wider range of volunteers to work with us to make a difference together.

All money raised will help us invest in equipment and systems to harvest yet more rain water reducing the need to water to a minimum. We will install even more bird baths, feeding stations, and have more drought-tolerant plants we know thrive locally. 

We regularly have to buy equipment to keep them safe, ensure they work safely, garden tools, mulch etc.,

Education via tours, talks and information giving signs linked to plants, wildlife and the wide- ranging benefits of community gardening. These elements of our plan will enable us to spread the word of sustainable gardening practices to local people, helping them in turn to use what we have learned in their own gardens and local wild spaces, plus meet like-minded people and increase the sense of well-being that working together outdoors brings about.

Labelling is a recent development to help support and increase their knowledge in turn. 

Sharing knowledge, top tips, experiences are vital to what we do, as our volunteers are asked daily to identify plants for passers by.

Our most recent 'Tasty Planters' installed in a park in the centre of our town encourage people to 'sow. grow and eat' collectively.

 The team host 'give and share' seed and plant swap mornings of herbs, edible plants and flowers. This idea came from one volunteer who during Lock down transformed her front garden into a vegetable patch, which then saw multiple the residents in her street to do the same.

This project successfully funded on 16th August 2023