"When I got upon the corn land in the Isle of Thanet, I got into a garden indeed... Corn fields, hop gardens, and orchards of apples, pears, cherries and filberts... Plantations of chestnut and of ash frequently occurring..." William Cobbett, Rural Rides 1830.
The landscape of East Kent is wonderfully diverse one, rich in its arable land, fruit growing, horticulture and wildlife.
This area has sometimes been called the East Kent Triangle and largely consists of the East Kent Arable and Horticultural belts, Stour Valley, Wansum and Lower Stour Marshes and the Blean landscape character areas.
Although much of the wider landscape of this area is undesignated, there are a wide variety and number of important sites, ranging from bluebell-rich ancient woodland Sites of Special Scientific Interest and Sites of Nature Conservation Interest in the Blean and former Kent Coalfield areas, through to one of the most important suites of coastal and wetland sites anywhere in Southern Britain. These include the Lydden Valley, Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory, Pegwell Bay National Nature Reserve, Ham Fen Nature Reserve, the Wansum Channel and Stour Valley, many of which are SSSIs, SNCIs or Ramsar sites. Sandwich Bay and Thanet Coast have both been designated as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) the highest European designation for conservation areas.
These sites are hugely important for their populations of breeding and passage birds and a vast range of unusual flora and invertebrate populations. Sandwich Bay supports 95% of the national population of Lizard orchid; Ham Fen has Britain's only population of (reintroduced) Eurasian beaver and supports a diverse range of dragonflies and damselflies. The Stour Valley and Wansum Channel contain many areas of important wet grazing marsh, ditch and dyke habitats.
Sites in Natural East Kent:
