About Gardd y Môr
In October 2024, Sea Trust was delighted to receive funding from the Pembrokeshire Coast Charitable Trust Force for Nature grant. We set out to create a biodiverse garden, in an unattractive concrete space, that is accessible to everyone in the local community. A garden that would increase biodiversity, with an educational purpose of raising awareness of the importance of pollination. A place to contemplate the sea and connect with nature.
We achieved this with a huge amount of help and collaboration from our volunteers and others within the local community. The main help we had was from our incredible Volunteer Maintenance Team – The Fab Five! (John Collins, John Padget, Chris Smith, Peter Sturdges and Rob Williams) who crafted the garden by hand. They built a series of planters and benches to surround our boundary wall opposite Ocean Lab Café entrance. They worked consistently every Wednesday since the project began – rain or shine. A huge THANK YOU to them – the project simply would not have been possible without them.
Our Marine Conservation Assistant, Anna, worked with local schools and our Sea Trust Marine Biology Club members (MBC) to build bug apartments and the sign for the ‘The Bumble Abode’. MBC were involved from the start of the project, with ideas and creating bug designs for the garden information board, helping to create the activity sheets, and even some planting.
We were incredibly lucky to have Shani Jackson volunteer her services as a garden designer (Shani Lawrence Garden Design). Shani worked with our volunteer gardener Chris Smith to create a plant list, produce a design and plant the garden, along with much other expertise and advice along the way. Shani also ran a workshop with Anna for the MBC groups on pollination.
We also had great support from many Sea Trust volunteers, intern students, and work experience students on our design and illustrations. We’d particularly like to thank Ben Hughes from Lifeforms for volunteering his time to design the plant illustrations, and Hannah Hryniszak for designing the display signs. We also had incredible volunteer support for Welsh translation, planting (Julia & Sue from Greening Fishguard & Goodwick), and putting gift packs together, as well as discounts and cooperation from our local builders merchants, Jewsons, who have been great. We used businesses local to Fishguard & Goodwick, wherever possible, including Right Price Print, Abersign, Goodwick Gardening Club, Nicholls Hardware, and Jewsons. It really was an incredible team effort; we are so grateful to all our amazing volunteers, helpers, and businesses.
After an informative and inspiring visit from Ant Rogers from the Pembrokeshire Nature Partnership, we decided to include the issues of climate change in the marine environment. As a result of that, we decided to risk some marram grass (as we are wary that it is invasive) and drought friendly plants in two of the planters and we produced an educational information board to highlight these issues.
During the project we applied for ‘Bee Friendly’ accreditation through Welsh Government Nature Conservation scheme. We were really happy to be approved for this and they liked our project so much that they have requested for us to be a case study for them.
We will work to develop and monitor the garden over the coming year with biodiversity surveys involving our Marine Biology Club (MBC) members, using the garden as part of our school group visits and as an educational opportunity to expand our education work into pollination and climate change topics. Anna is already planning some great activities with the MBC group.
The project has allowed us to transform what was an unattractive concrete space into a garden full of pollinator plants, food and habitat for insects. We are hoping over the months to come when we survey the garden we will see an increase in bug life in and around the garden.
The garden has exceeded our expectations of how it would look and the impact it would have. It does exactly what we want it to do – a beautiful space for all to enjoy – highlighting the areas of pollination and climate change. We hope it will be in constant use, especially in the warmer months.
