Great Big Green Week (10th-18th June) is the UK’s biggest celebration of community action to tackle climate change and protect nature. Events take place all over the country and range from book/clothes swaps, allotment skill swaps to wildlife talks and tours.
We ran an event at Walmer Castle to encourage young people to get involved, and we also created an accompanying digital media campaign so people could get involved at home.
We invited young people from the local area to come and learn about Walmer’s fascinating history and grounds for the day. We had a tour of the gardens with Walmer’s Head Gardener, Philip, and also learnt about easy ways to help the environment at home.
We learnt that Walmer Castle has been used as the official residence for the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports since 1728 and that a lot of the Lord Wardens had impacted the gardens and made them into what we recognise today. Some famous Lord Wardens include William Pitt the Younger, The Duke of Wellington and the Queen Mother.
The Lord Warden used to be an extremely important military and political position. The Lord Warden would be responsible for lots of different things including the defence of Kent and Sussex! It’s now just a ceremonial title.
William Pitt the Younger created new pleasure grounds (a landscaped garden area that is designed to be beautiful) at Walmer in 1802.
The Queen Mother visited Walmer once a year (often with one or two royal corgis) and to celebrate her 95th birthday, Pitt’s walled garden was re-modelled to the charming Queen Mother’s Garden that we see today.
Queen Mother's Gardens
We visited the Kitchen Garden and meadows. We found lots of different fruits and vegetables growing in the kitchen gardens including onions, potatoes, rhubarb, apples and pears.
Did you know that some plants act as a natural deterrent to bugs and flies?
At Walmer they use companion planting (planting a diverse plant community) to naturally protect the vegetables. This means that you might find marigolds growing alongside beans! We also learnt that to allow the stronger apples to take more nutrients the gardeners pluck the smaller apples off early.
In the meadow the gardeners at Walmer have planted lots of Yellow Rattle. It absorbs nutrients from the grass and helps turn grassy areas back into a lovely diverse meadow.
We also visited the Glen and the Ponds.
The Glen was originally a chalk pit and in the 1800s Lady Hester Stanhope (niece of Lord Warden William Pitt the Younger) oversaw the planting of an evergreen garden.
Over the years the Glen became hugely overgrown and difficult to access. In 2018 a huge project was started to rediscover the Glen and some of the other lost aspects of Walmer’s Pleasure Grounds. The Glen has now been restored to a wonderful paradise for lots of different wildlife (both plants and animals!).
Did you know that goldfish can be bad for pond life?
Goldfish eat dragonfly larvae (like caterpillar’s cocoons) which prevents them from hatching and disrupts their lifecycle.
This year, to allow the dragonfly population to flourish, the Walmer gardeners have taken the goldfish out of the pond.
We finished off our morning getting our hands dirty by making bug hotels, terrariums and seed bombs. We had lots of fun naming our bug hotels from Bugingham Palace to Inn-sect Palace and Bug-and-Breakfast!
Bug hotels are an easy way of helping the bugs and critters that already live in your garden or patio – they can be as simple or as fancy as you like.
Terrariums are an ecosystem in a jar! They are very low maintenance and once sealed they can survive for a super long time without any assistance.
Seed bombs are a fun and easy way to plant lots of seeds at once! We made ours out of yellow rattle and wild carrot seeds as these are plants that already grow in the area.
You can follow our ‘how to’ guides to create your own bug hotels, seed bombs and terrariums here on our Instagram.