page_title: Ashford Green Corridor
section_title: Watercress Fields & Leacon Road
hierarchical_section_title: Ashford Green Corridor / The Green Corridor / Watercress Fields & Leacon Road
context_page_description: Ashford Green Corridor is a green space that runs through the town of Ashford in Kent, England. The Green Corridor is made up of parks, recreation grounds and other green spaces alongside the rivers that flow through Ashford. It is a Local Nature Reserve.
  The town has been growing steadily since the early 19th century. As the town has expanded, land close to the rivers has not usually been built on, due to the risk of flooding because the Ashford Borough Council has protected it as green space.
context_section_description: Watercress Fields has formal football pitches and a play area as well as areas for informal recreation. It is an important site linking areas in the south of Ashford to the town centre and other parts of the Green Corridor. The river has a natural profile with many meanders, and wide margins of vegetation that support riverside species such as cuckoo flower and alder (some of the alders have succumbed to a disease – however dead wood is a good habitat for invertebrates). The river itself supports Water Voles, having sufficient food resources and bankside cover. The rest of the park has an open character that is interspersed with woodland gardens and areas of long grass that are important habitats for bird species and invertebrates. In the past it is thought that watercress may have been grown on the site. Further along the river at Leacon Road there are some riverside sculptures of aquatic wildlife and an old fording point that once linked this area with Beaver Lane.
caption: Cuckoo flower
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