Kent Community Oasis Garden Student Ambassador Highlights

Kent Community Oasis Garden is a project run by a collection of students, staff and community members working to create a sustainability hub centred around growing food and connecting with nature.

This year, KentCOG has had 4 student ambassadors; George, Selby, Simon and Lily. They are all third-year students who found the garden, embedded themselves in the community and made it their space to share and spend time in as often as possible. The student ambassadors act as the student voice for the garden and aim to make sure that every volunteer feels safe, seen, connected and welcome in the garden so that everyone can feel the benefits from KentCOG that they have felt.

The ambassadors have shared their highlights from this year at COG:

Selby

“It’s hard to pick specific highlights as a KentCOG ambassador because I have so many happy memories from the garden. I suppose the biggest achievement while I’ve been an ambassador has been acquiring Hothe Court Farmhouse and being able to gradually make it our own. It’s an amazing space, especially in winter. In the run-up to Christmas 2025, we had a performance by Folkshop there which was brilliant; loads of students, staff and community members came to watch and celebrate the end of term with us. That’s what’s so great about COG: I’ve met and made friends with so many people that I probably would never have talked to otherwise. I also love getting to see the garden flourish in spring and being able to think “We helped do that.” My favourite recent projects have been making hibernaculums and building the bat buffet plant beds because we could all spend time together outside, work as a team and feel like we’d accomplished something at the end.”

Simon

“Being a student ambassador this past year has been an incredible way to engage even more with COG. Experiencing an entire year of the garden is so rewarding, from the abundant summer to all the preparations we do in winter. I love welcoming new people to the garden and seeing people’s confidence grow. A big highlight has been gaining access to Hothe Court and expanding the potential of the garden and seeing the start of a long process of making the space our own. In March, I also got to contribute to a short reportage about young people’s relationship to growing vegetables, and it’s been amazing to be able to share that passion with people in so many ways.”

George

“I think for me, one of the best parts about COG is the ways we build a community and include people as best as we can. You get to meet such a lovely range of people here and everyone’s talents are welcome. Having a community space to express my artistic side has been super fun too, painting parts of the garden and Hothe Court with my friends and even getting to do a performance with Folkshop was great fun!”

Lily

“For me, the highlight of being an ambassador has been being able to spend time outside with all the volunteers and just making sure everyone has a good time and feels like they have got something out of the time they spend here. I think it’s so important that people have access to a community space, and I really enjoy being a part of that, and seeing what it means to other people who volunteer at the garden.”

(From Left to Right: Lily, Simon, George, Selby)

The University Mammal Challenge 2026: The Rodentifiers

The University Mammal Challenge is an annual competition organised by the Mammal Society that encourages students to monitor the mammals on their campus, increase engagement and raise awareness of UK mammals to help protect them. The challenge runs from the first week of February until National Mammal Week in the last week of April to help boost mammal records in a time period that they are often lower. Over 40 student teams from across the UK are taking part in the 2026 University Mammal Challenge and this year, the University of Kent has a team for the first time – The Rodentifiers!

There are around 90 species of mammals in the UK and as a team of ecology and conservation students, we were all very interested in seeing how many of those species we would be able to record on campus as well as sharing our love for mammals with our wider community at the University of Kent. We decided to create a team so that we would be able to not only achieve those aims but also learn a lot ourselves too!

(Meet the Team! From left to right: Alex, Nat, Nathan, Elinor, Tristan)

In the first two months of the competition, we have carried out many surveys to increase the data that we have on the mammals on campus. We have done this by setting up camera traps across campus, running hedgehog footprint tunnel surveys and completing foot transects and bat surveys. In addition to this, we have been running events like a Valentines mammal board, a talk about small mammal footprints by Jazz Woollard and the creation of a bat buffet planter in collaboration with Kent Community Oasis Garden.

(From left to right: A photo taken during our mammal mapper event looking at mammal signs. Our Valentines Board! Putting up one of our camera traps)

Taking part in this challenge has allowed us to get a much more in-depth view of the mammals that call our campus home than we ever have before and also allowed us to see the impact of the work that we do to create habitats for mammals. Seeing voles, shrews and wood mice at Kent Community Oasis Garden using the dead-hedges, log piles and ponds that have been created there is really rewarding. We have also really enjoyed being able to engage with people and getting them interested in what species are using our campus. Throughout the challenge we have been using Mammal Mapper to record our mammal sightings and being able to get other people to join in and start logging what they see too has been great as it is a great way to get people to start noticing the natural world around them and become more curious about what species actually live on campus (also don’t forget to write The Rodentifiers in the comments of any observation you make on mammal mapper to earn us points!)

(On the left is a camera trap image of a badger and on the right is a photo of a bank vole taken by Elinor Casey)

We were able to earn the most points in the first month of the challenge, but we are not slowing down any time soon! So far throughout the challenge we have been able to record a range of different mammal species from bats to badgers, and we hope to record many more in the last month of the challenge as some are now waking up from hibernation. Look out for upcoming events including owl pellet dissection, bat walks and collaborations with Kent Community Oasis Garden. You can also follow The Rodentifiers on Instagram to see what we have been up to at rodentifiers_uok