If you are lucky enough to have a garden, you will know what a pleasure it can be! A refuge from the world, a place of colour and scent.

Perhaps you grow prize winning blooms, or a harvest of fresh home grown fruit and vegetables? Even a small balcony can have space for a few pots and be a place to sit and escape, or watch the world go by.

Our gardens and outdoor spaces can also be a precious source of food, water and shelter for wildlife. To find out more about how to encourage wildlife, check out the following great resources:

Metre Square for Wildlife page on Seaford Environmental Alliance website
Wilder Gardens section in Greenhavens website
Mainstream TV also has lots of information, for example this recent episode of Gardeners’ World
Sussex Wildlife trust have a great section on their website about encouraging wildlife of all kinds.
Butterfly conservation can advise about encouraging butterflies and moths to your garden
Buglife can show you how to welcome bugs to your garden
The Bumblebee Trust have lots of great tips about gardening for bumblebees

Don’t forget to log your wildlife friendly gardens on the Metre Square for Wildlife site. This map is joining up all the green spaces in Seaford, so we can all see the wildlife corridors created!

Each year Seaford participates in various Open gardens events, which is a great way to see some beautiful gardens, and get inspiration for your own spaces. The salt and wind in Seaford are a challenge for plants, so it’s always fascinating to see what plants are thriving locally!

These include the stunning Driftwood garden in Bishopstone which Monty Don called “a small garden by the sea with inspiring planting and design” Aideen and Denis also open up the Beautiful Cupani Garden in Seaford and sell plants, and teas to raise money for local charities.

Our public gardens are also so important, giving people a place to sit and enjoy the flowers, bees and butterflies or perhaps get chatting to other people.

In Seaford check out the following gardens:

Seaford Peace Garden, at the Crouch is an oasis of calm and beauty, created in partnership with Seaford Quakers. There is always something interesting in bloom, and if you sit a while, it’s likely you will spot wildlife including insects and birds.

On the seaside opposite the brightly coloured beach hut shops, is The Beach garden. From a patch of unloved ground between Green Lane and the seafront, volunteers created, and continue to care for, a garden planted with a wide variety of sea-salt resistant flora. Colourful benches offer space to sit and chat, or sit and think, sheltered from the wind.

Seaford Community garden is a beautifully tended garden, whose volunteers grow a range of flowers and vegetables. It’s open on Wednesday mornings when you can chat to the volunteers working there. Take some cash as there are often interesting spare plants and vegetables for sale.

This year the flower beds outside Morrisons have been full of edible flowers, herbs and vegetables, which can be harvested by the community as they walk past. What a wonderful way to show people what you can grow in a small space. Find out more about this project here.

New community gardens are also planned at Cliff Gardens, the Peverells, and at Sutton Downs. Watch this space to find out more!