We’re delighted to announce that we have been awarded Dougie’s Grant. This is an annual grant made in memory of Douglas Le Huquet. Among many other things he was a farmer and grower and had some land up near Donkey Hill in St Andrews. You can find out more about Dougie here https://www.dougiesgrant.com. Steve Falla’s review of his life is fantastic and I’m sure you’d agree you won’t find many people who cured tobacco, made blancmange from seaweed, ran building projects in Florida and owned Cobo Chippie.
His daughter Michelle manages his legacy and has been keen to celebrate his life with annual grants to charities that benefit Guernsey people for many years to come. We met Michelle up at their fields a couple of times 4 or 5 years ago and tramped through the water meadow up there. She often spoke about how he wanted to see meadows thrive in Guernsey, and has spoken about Dougie enjoying nature and managing his land with that in mind. In fact, she is looking for a steward to help protect and care for one of his fields at the moment (drop us a message if you are interested).
When we put all of that together, we couldn’t help but be drawn to Fort Field. A space for nature and a space for locals and visitors alike. High profile with a meadow which we are trying to improve, plus the cherry tree avenue, better verges, native hedging, picnic benches and the rest of the things called for in the public consultation. None of these are cheap- if you visited a garden centre recently, you’ll know what we mean. So we put together a proposal, and we are so pleased that our vision for the future of that area captured the imagination of the judges. The grant takes us a long way to meeting our first year target and better than that it means we can get on with it right now.
So you are going to see us call for volunteers as we move into the planting phase. We may not be enjoying all of the rain right now, but it’s the perfect time for getting trees and hedging established. Allowing them to get their roots down means they’ll be there for many years to come providing food and shelter for pollinators and colour and a lift to all our spirits in the spring and summer.
If you want to find out more about what we are doing at Fort Field then you can keep in touch via Friends of Fort Field on Facebook