Thanks to TGS Alumna, an exciting link has been made between local award-winning environmental stewardship project Marden Wildlife and TGS Marvellous Meadows

Marden Farmer Cluster involves a collective of 26 farmers, all of whom are working together with Marden Wildlife, Kent Wildlife Trust and Natural England to improve biodiversity in the Low Weald. With the active participation of bodies such as the BTO and Natural England, they are developing conservation and citizen science projects and have been seeking to widen engagement with the local community. One of the sites is managed by TGS Alumna Lou Carpenter née Highwood (Class of 74), a founder member of the project, who saw the work TGS students are undertaking as part of the Marvellous Meadows Project, and reached out to create a link.

The group has extensive wildflower meadows (one of which has much the same composition of plants as our own) and their land harbours good numbers of the nationally scarce and declining Turtle Dove, amongst a host of other fascinating wildlife.

Lou explains more about the objectives of the Turtle Dove project"...to try and create bespoke habitat for Turtle Dove, a bird which is threatened by global extinction, but is doing fairly well around Marden. By a combination of simple habitat tweaks and natural regeneration, we aim to take productive farmland into a wilder space to benefit the doves. There’s a lot of science behind this, and we are working with Kent Wildlife Trust ecologists, using radio tags and coloured rings".

Elodie and Holly (Year13) have signed up to be student ambassadors for the Turtle Doves Project, and members of the Marvellous Meadows team are hoping to engage further with the project which aims to look at how to improve breeding success for the charismatic Turtle Dove.

Biology students in Year 12 will have the opportunity to carry out field work for their IB Internal Assessments in the summer at one of the sites managed by Lou.

It is early days, but we are looking forward to making the most of this association, supporting a genuinely exciting and valuable conservation scheme on our own doorstep!

I think we have a real story to tell in how we have successfully recovered and enhanced our biodiversity, including those wild flowers I loved as a child growing up on the farm. I believe that there are strong curriculum links to show the young people what nature can do to turn back the tide on species loss. A glance at our website or Facebook page at Marden Wildlife will show that we are looking at species biodiversity across the board, and community engagement and education is part of this. The link between our community and farmers and farmland is strong in Marden, which is why it is viewed so positively by Natural England.

lou carpenter

Read one of Lou's recent articles about lowland meadow creation here.

The Wildlife Meadow at TGS is a project funded by our Enrichment Fundraising.