Welcome to the Darent Valley Landscape Partnership Scheme; Samuel Palmer’s Earthly Paradise.
The Darent Valley Landscape Partnership Scheme is an exciting large-scale partnership, working to conserve and enhance the distinctive heritage landscapes of the Darent Valley and to connect people to the Valley to help us conserve it for the future.
The scheme focuses around the work of influential landscape artist Samuel Palmer who, 200 years ago, described the Darent Valley as an ‘earthly paradise’. Today, he would still recognise the special qualities conveyed through his visionary paintings. It remains a landscape of surprising beauty, rich in diverse habitats and with an impressive cultural heritage. But this is a landscape on the edge. London has expanded to the brink of the valley, bringing multiple and dramatically increasing pressures that are dissolving its natural character. Many people who live within reach of the valley lack awareness of the amazing potential of this captivating landscape which is on their doorstep, further threatening the future of the valley.
The scheme brings together a unique mix of organisations that will work with and empower local communities to ensure the survival of this exceptional area. Through them, we will achieve genuinely sustainable conservation of its natural and cultural heritage with communities that feel emotionally and physically reconnected with their landscape.
