About 15 young people, ages 16 to 25, volunteer twice a month to carry out practical conservation tasks, grow food and create wildlife gardening features in a garden at Tilgate Park in Sussex. They have sown wildflower beds, created beetle banks, planted and laid a hedge, maintain a pond, hoverfly lagoons and created numerous wood piles as well as bird feeders made from willow.

Tamara Jewell, community project officer, and the youth rangers had a great day in the wildlife garden for their first session back in the autumn term. “It was a busy day, we sampled carrots and cucumber which were delicious with hummous, a salad of rocket and nasturtium which had a fiery kick, and the tomatoes were deliciously sweet.

“We are saving the potatoes, carrots and apples for winter warming and intend to cook these up in a Dutch oven over the campfire on a day when the weather turns. Sharing is caring so we will of course leave some apples for the wildlife and will probably make some apple bird feeders too.

“We have made a campfire version of apple and rhubarb crumble from a Jamie Oliver recipe in the past. Cook the apple and rhubarb up in the Dutch oven over the campfire, , with orange zest and juice, bash the digestive biscuits up, fill recycled ramekins with fruit mixture and add the biscuits on top. It’s delicious.”

Lee enjoys cooking on the campfire. He said: “Youth Rangers feels like family. My favourite thing to do, is watering the plants in the wildlife garden.”

Ryan enjoys doing good for nature around the Tilgate area and meeting lots of different communities that all meet together at the garden. He said: “You can meet some amazing people at Youth Rangers and when you come here you always feel included.”

Tamara added: “The young people are from the local area; we have had some referrals through social prescribing to help the young people with anxiety. They all put in a lot of effort to maintain the garden, grow the food and pick the harvest. So we all look forwards to cooking up tasty meals on the campfire and eating together in the garden. When there are zero food miles too, it is so satisfying. Sometimes things don’t work out, but we roll with the punches and when you don't succeed you just try and try again.”

The Sussex Wildlife Trust Youth Rangers project was funded by the Gatwick Greenspace Partnership. Find more by looking for @ggpwildlife and @sussexwildlife on Facebook.