Wilder Kent Blog

Learn more about the wildlife and wild places in Kent and beyond.

Nature Reserves A group of common seals together in the sea.
Common seals, photo by Russel Miles

How to protect our marine areas

Nina Jones, Protected Area Warden takes a moment ahead of National Marine Week to explain what we can individually and collectively do to help restore and protect nature on our coasts.

Nature Reserves Heather Corrie Vale, pond and sunset

Heather Corrie Vale: One year on

With input from Simon Bateman-Brown, Head of Land Management, and Evan Bowen-Jones, Chief Executive of Kent Wildlife Trust, we explore the conservation work we have done at Heather Corrie Vale since attaining validation against the Wilder Carbon Standard, by Soil Association Certification.

Nature Reserves

Nightingales at Hothfield Heathlands in June

On 19th May one hundred years ago, the first outdoors broadcast by the BBC was of professional cellist Beatrice Harrison playing to and with nightingales in the garden of her Surrey home. Around a million listeners tuned in to the midnight broadcast, and she performed for similar outdoor broadcasts over the next twelve years.

Nature Reserves
© Jon Hawkins

May on Hothfield Heathlands

Margery Thomas describes another delightful May in Hothfield Heathland where volunteers conducted an amphibian torchlight survey on a number of Hothfield ponds. To learn what they found, read on!

Nature Reserves

Our plans for Polhill

How do you restore a chalk downland? Our appeal to purchase an extension to our existing Polhill Bank nature reserve offers us a unique opportunity to restore an additional 26 acres of arable land into a rare and biodiverse habitat in Sevenoaks, Kent. But how do we achieve this goal? Here are our plans.

Nature Reserves

Early spring plants & whitethroats: April on Hothfield Heathlands

The writer H E Bates moved from Northamptonshire to Little Chart Forstal in 1931. His deep knowledge of the countryside coloured all his writing. In ‘Through the Woods’ (1936), with fine wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker, he wrote in loving detail about the plant and animal life in Coldham Wood, which lies due west of the Extension section of Hothfield Heathland.