POLICE raided land in an isolated area and found flourishing cannabis plants being shielded by an electric fence, a court heard.

As well as the discovery at Little Snoad Cottage in Otterden, near Faversham, officers also pounced at addresses in Sheerness and Ashford.

Now, 30-year-old Ricky Backshall been jailed for three years for cultivating the drug.

Suzanne Kew, mother of Backshall’s two children, was given a community order after admitting allowing premises to be used for the production of cannabis.

Edmund Fowler, prosecuting, said 436 plants about 3ft tall were found growing in an enclosure with dense mesh at Otterden. There was also equipment to process the drug.

The cottage was rented in the joint names of Backshall and 36-year-old Kew.

Mr Fowler said when officers went to Ousley Farm at Hinxhill, Ashford, they found cannabis plants growing in plastic tunnel.

At mother-of-four Kew’s home in Chalk Road, Queenborough, about 20 plants were in various states of growth.

Backshall, of Linden Drive, Queensway, Sheerness, admitted cultivating cannabis and abstracting electricity.

Backshall had previous convictions for possessing cannabis. David Barnes, defending, said his client had smoked the drug since the age of 12.

He had been a landscape gardener but problems with gall stones and kidney stones prevented him from working.

Mr Barnes said Backshall was effectively working as a gardener at the cannabis farm and was not involved in financing it.

He would have received £250 per kilo of the drug. The first crop would have netted up to £16,000.

Backshall and Kew had children aged six and two. Backshall’s mother Carol Whittaker, 55, had dropped off one of the children before she and two friends, Phyllis Paolillo, 54, and Jean Wigglesworth, 50, were killed by joyrider Luke Bootes in June 2006.

Bootes, 19, of Hawthorn Avenue, Sheerness, was later locked up for nine years. He had been twice the legal alcohol limit.