July Update!

Environmental Audit and Awards Assessment With University of Kent and Canterbury in Bloom    

Kent Community Oasis Garden welcomes Beth our new Volunteer Environmental Champion Intern from the University of Kent who is looking at our environmental impact and sustainability at our new community garden.  We have also been assessed by Canterbury in Bloom for an award and one of our areas for improvement is to increase the habitat for birds, bees and bats.  With this in mind, Ed our Horticulture Apprentice, Matt our Volunteer Gardener and Hannah our Wellbeing Volunteer, worked with her as team to create a risk assessment, obtain tools and reused unwanted natural materials found around the site to create a beautiful bug hotel.

The garden is accessible to anyone, all year round, with sessions for training and support by DBS checked Safeguarding Officers and First Aiders on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10:00 to 14:00. It is now providing produce to harvest, wellbeing sessions, Level 1 Horticulture Traineeships, Level 2 Horticulture Apprenticeships and work experience with practical skills for students, volunteers and unemployed adults.  We support approximately 12 people per session, from 18-100 years, with retired volunteers mentoring and supporting younger volunteers.

Our plans for later this year are to build an outdoor classroom, create a sensory garden and plant daffodils with Canterbury In Bloom volunteers. Come along on anyWednesday 10 – 2pm where you can meet us, see the garden and find out more about how you can help or join the project with your time, knowledge, plants, donations or sponsor our work.

New Encounters

Blog post by one of our volunteer, a MSc student here at the University of Kent.

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I stumbled across the Kent Community Oasis Garden on a walk to the Blean from campus. It was off hours, but after a poke around I got the feeling that it was a positive space. I made note of the hours and was on my way. Finding Canterbury my home away from home and in a milder climate than I am used to getting dirty through the winter sounded like great therapy and right up my alley. It wasn’t till a few weeks later when I needed a location to conduct a micro research project for a methods course did I realize that the garden would be a perfect spot. Studying ethnobotany at Kent, the relationship members had with the physical and social landscape I felt would be an interesting study. If I was drawn in by the potential for positive wellbeing the garden offered, would anyone else? What would those other relationships look like? Does the garden positively impact wellbeing and can the how’s be identified and maybe even quantified? I volunteered weekly to find out. In all kinds of English weather, and luckily not too much rain I helped where I could, observed and interviewed members over six weeks this fall. Among the language and gardening insight was the conclusion that the members of the community take part in a reciprocal, therapeutic landscape contributing to the wellbeing of both the land and the people.

Thank you notes found in the KentCOG suggestion box