A Wharf Garden Journey
The wharf was once busy with the day-to-day arrival of materials for the nearby Lloyd’s paper mill – pulp, esparto grass, cotton. Then the finished rolls of paper would be brought back down for sailing to the printing presses in London. With the inevitable consequences for the Creek ecology.
But since then, 100 years of being abandoned and left to itself, have given the space and time for nature’s powers of recuperation to take effect.When I arrived at this ‘derelict’ site, it was already a little reserve of resilient wildflowers and wasteland-thrivers, with Slow Worms, Common Lizards, Crickets and Grasshoppers in the grass, Kingfishers spotted skimming above the high tide, along with wading Godwits, Sandpipers and Avocets, Robins, Crows, Long-Tailed Tits, an occasional kestrel above, and eels in the outflow of the Periwinkle stream into the Creek.
The land along Lloyd’s Wharf has a unique character…ex-industrial, nutrient-poor soil, which is great for wildflowers and meadow grasses. It is occasionally partly covered with a surge tide, which brings slightly brackish water over the land, allowing rushes and reeds to flourish without impinging on the other wild plants that grow along here.
There are also plants unique to a riverside/creekside environment, such as Sea Plantain and Sea Aster which supports a wonderful colony of Sea Aster Mining Bees.Since then, we’ve done some survey work with wildlife folk: Kent Field Club, RSPB and the British Bryological Society and volunteers from Kent Wildlife Trust.
All in all, what we’ve found just goes to show what nature abounds in the scrubby bits of ‘wasteland’ that sit amongst urban development.
Lloyds Wharf is only metres away from busy roads, a retail park and industrial units. And yet here’s a little feel for what we’ve found
Plant Life
Rowan
Scarlet Pimpernal
Creeping Thistle
Smooth Sowthistle
Broad-Leaved Dock
Yellow-Wort
Ox-Eye Daisies
Ragwort
Whitlow Grass (it's not really a grass!)Hop TrefoilEnglish Stonecrop
Groundsel
Goat Willow
Wild Teasel
Primrose
Viola
Wild Carrot
Sea PlantainTraveller's Joy aka Old Man's Beard, because of its fluffy white seedheads in the autumn. It's a member of the buttercup family and it's woody stems were traditionally used to make baskets
Hemp Agrimony
Wild/Common Michaelmas Daisy
Common Toadflax
Pellitory-of-the-Wall has seeded itself in the old walls at the creek. Its tiny reddish flowers are highly allergenic. In Australia it's known as the Asthma Plant!
White Melilot
Soft Brome grass
Common Dogwood
Rough-stalked Feather Moss
Grey Cushion Moss
Oak Moss – actually a lichen and highly valued as a fixative agent in perfumery. It has a crisp, green, leathery fragrance of its own with musky undertones.
Lots more mosses!
Jelly Ear fungus
Birds, bugs, mammals and more
Small Heath butterfly
Harvest mouse
Flower Beetles
Bank Vole
Missing Sector Orb Weaver - what a big name for such a little spider! Only about 1cm long. So called because it always leaves a couple of sectors out of its web
Common Green Grasshopper
Common Earthworm,Green Cellar Slug,
Black Slug (although apparently you can only really tell the species accurately by dissecting the genitals!)
Garden Cross Spiderling
Ground Crab SpiderBlack AntSlender Running Spider
Sun Jumping Spider
Labyrinth Spider
Crickets
… and many more!!
Meanwhile we’ve been doing some simple bits and pieces to assist the further restitution of this land, creating a new life for some of the old timbers coming out of Raybel, planted with a mix of perennial and annual flowers, including geums, verbena, campanula, geranium, achillea, Firecracker Sunflowers, summer marigolds and Spring bulbs.
New planted loganberry has already provided a first fruit… collecting young comfrey plants to establish (not only do bees go mad for it but you can make natural plant feed from its leaves. It’s known as knitbone and is a homeopathic remedy too)…. giving the scrub grass an annual cut with scythe and strimmer, to create a meadow, leaving the cuttings on the ground and raking them off later to give the flower seeds a chance to fall back to the ground.
At the far end of the wharf we’ve created a little ‘Secret Garden’. An archaeological dig revealed the soil here is only about 4 or 5 inches deep. With that and more hot, droughty weather, we’ve gone for a dry garden...gravel beds, mosaics, benches made from old barge timbers and drought-tolerant plants like houseleeks.
A Moss Herbarium was another new feature, to help identify the myriad mosses on site – dry them out to peer through with a microscope. Add a drop of water and they regenerate to their fresh state. Magic!
A donated greenhouse and raised beds constructed by the volunteers meant we could start growing some food and sow flower seeds. The raised beds were made using old pallets and strengthened plastic left from packaging. They’re filled like a Hügel mound...old logs and branches at the bottom, then plant matter from the compost heap, then topsoil mixed with a bit of manure. We seeded some phacelia and red clover to dig in as green manure. The first food crop included beautiful beetroot and golden chard. Over this winter we’ve grown spinach, radish, pak choi and winter salad leaves in the greenhouse.
We have many plans to continue the work we’ve started…more raised beds for edibles, extra planters for ornamental plants around the Museum, strimming and scraping a patch for more wildflowers in the meadow and activities for locals to come and join in working, learning and enjoying the land here at the wharf.
Raybellian Ruth