Wraps off...The Cliff Gardens: A New Community Garden for Seaford’s Seafront Imagine a beautiful garden of native plants in the tourist area at Splash Point, alongside the Kittiwake colony, the Shoal Bench and entrance to the South Downs National Park and Seaford Head Nature Reserve. This muchloved and visited part of the Esplanade has been the subject of our attentions during the last 15 months, and along with the new Martello toilets and concessions, we think it deserves a make-over! Seaford Community Partnership embarked on this project to improve an ugly, deeply pot-holed and unmade-up road between Cliff Gardens and the Esplanade, as part of its contribution to the South Downs National Park Authority’s ‘Ouse Valley Climate Action’ National Lottery bid. At that time, little did we know the complexities of such a project! So much later, having negotiated funding sources to match possible lottery money; discovered which permissions are needed (no mean task..) and sought permissions from the Councils involved; researched suitable construction materials for the beds and pathways; made educational links with Seaford Schools and the Railway Land Nature Reserve in Lewes, we decided on the purpose, and main features of the garden and commissioned local Garden designers Gabby Tofts and Christian Funnell to create it.
Aerial view of proposed plan
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Our aim has been to create an inspirational and attractive garden with links to the Shoal and the Martello Tower and fields surrounding it – part educational and awareness-raising, part sculptural, and calling for Seaford community involvement of sponsorship and volunteering. It will be a place to relax, to socialize, and to reflect not only on the climate crisis of our times but importantly
and optimistically, what we can do about it. The garden is a ‘Climate Change Garden’, showing how plants can survive in different environmental conditions and how they will need to adapt to the predicted effects of Climate Change of droughts, floods and storms in future years. The garden will be made up of large beds, showing how plants start to colonise salty shingle conditions and gradually form communities of plants providing shelter for each other, creating soil on chalky cliffs and eventually chalk grassland which we are so fortunate to enjoy on the South Downs. The increased plant diversity attracts pollinators like bees, butterflies and insects, provides food for birds and small mammals and creates the biodiversity that nature’s intricate food webs need. The beds will be contained in Corten steel surrounds – each bed representing a different habitat with the plants that can grow there. Our coastline consists of distinct areas: shingle beach, chalk cliffs and chalk grassland, each with its own typical mix of plants and flowers. These will be represented, along with those plants that can survive extremes of drought and seasonal flooding. And lastly we will create a large garden of plants, both native and cultivated, that Seaford gardeners can grow in their windswept coastal gardens to encourage pollinators, provide food for different birds, butterflies and wildlife, and thus increase the biodiversity. Our aim is to create wildlife corridors between the River Ouse and the South Downs. Alongside the plantings, the garden will contain sculptures by Christian Funnell (designer of the Shoal Bench, Birling Gap sculptures and many other well-known Fishbone features). This will give Sculpture interest in the winter months of storms when the garden will lie low and also provide an opportunity to sponsor plaques – perhaps for our children and grandchildren? We are using sponsorship to involve the community and make them
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