A community planting and coastal gardening project is underway to help create Hastings’ first ‘living laboratory’ on the seafront.

We Dig Hastings is a new project which sees the Transition Town Hastings group joining forces with Great Dixter Garden to create a climate-resilient garden on the seafront at Denmark Place.

Local people were involved in lending a hand during the initial planting session on Saturday October 25.

This pilot initiative will play a key role in shaping the wider landscape design for the Town Deal-funded Hastings Public Realm and Green Connections project and the team will be trialling a new kind of climate-resilient, biodiversity-rich planting scheme designed especially for our harsh seaside conditions.

Planting took place under guidance of Fergus Garrett and the expert team at Great Dixter.

The planting scheme trial will help test future landscaping and biodiversity approaches across the town centre project. These will be delivered alongside new accessible walking and cycling routes and enhanced public spaces as part of the wider project, which should be starting construction in late Spring 2026.

The project aims to transform Hastings town centre, complementing its built heritage with multifunctional spaces that will encourage dwell time and promote wellbeing, through the widespread application of beautiful, ecologically rich and biodiverse horticulture that is cost-effective and simple to maintain.

The Hastings Garden Town vision, inspired by Great Dixter’s world-famous philosophy of creative ecology, combines horticultural innovation, biodiverse creativity to transform the public realm as an exemplary project in the region.

Pictures by Brian Bailey.