About Green your Neighbourhood
Empowering communities to create green spaces
With thanks to National Lottery players, we are excited to have launched an exciting campaign, Green Your Neighbourhood!
Green Your Neighbourhood will allow us to help communities across the UK to create or enhance their local green space, and is being made possible thanks to a grant of £10,000 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The Wildlife Garden Project worked alongside Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust to film community groups involved in Nextdoor Nature Nottingham, the Trust’s movement for nature, to launch a series of films and a national campaign. Our mission is to make it easy for people like you to take ownership of your local green space and take action that will benefit your local area, your community and wildlife.
Green spaces for people
Improved physical health, mental health and wellbeing are just some of the benefits that having access to a local green space provides. However there are currently 2.8 million people across the UK who are not living within a ten-minute walk of a green space. We want to change that!
We believe everyone should have access to nature and the benefits that it provides, and our series of films and resources will remove some of the obstacles that may stand in the way of getting started. We want to give people across the UK the confidence, knowledge and inspiration to create, maintain and enhance green spaces in their local area. By providing easy to follow information on engaging communities, fundraising and essential things like insurance, as well as practical wildlife gardening guides, we will make it easy for communities to take ownership of their local space.
The UK is currently placed in the lowest 12% of global countries and territories for biodiversity intactness
Natural History Museum, in collaboration with the RSPB
Green spaces for nature
The recently released People’s Plan for Nature calls for ‘a network of local biodiverse and health focused green spaces owned and run by the people, for the people.’ We couldn’t agree more, and our aim is to inspire action and make it easy for communities to create or enhance their local green space.
Our videos will not only guide viewers through the practical steps to take to engage their community and get set up as a community group, but will also provide advice on how to provide for wildlife in those spaces. Our easy-to-follow video guides cover a range of wildlife-friendly measures including creating habitat for wildlife such as dead hedges, composting and growing food in a wildlife-friendly way.
Project updates
It has been a fun and busy year, working with community groups who are part of Nextdoor Nature Nottingham, a movement for nature run by Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust. See how the project went below!
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July 2023 – Plans are underway!
We are over the moon that we have been given the go ahead to start working on the Green Your Neighbourhood campaign, made possible with a grant of £10,000 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. We are now as busy as bees getting everything ready to start filming our tutorials and planning our campaign. We can’t wait to get started!
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August 2023 – Our first shoot at the Hubb in Nottingham
We had our very first shoot this month! Laura visited Nadeem at the Hubb in Sneinton, along with Jasmine from the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, to have a look around and find out about his plans for the green space. Nadeem and his community will be creating a wildflower meadow, herb garden and dye garden and installing accessible planters. His aim is to create a welcoming space that will help his community reconnect with nature.
The Hubb will be one of three spaces that we will be focusing on to create a series of case study videos. These videos will provide inspiration and tips for other communities who wish to follow in their footsteps. We are excited to see how Nadeem’s plans unfold!
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September 2023: Creating a dead hedge!
What a day! We joined Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust at St Leo’s Church in Basford to make a video on how to create a dead hedge – a wonderful habitat which supports a wide range of creatures
There was help from a wonderful group of volunteers from the St Leo’s gardening group, Refugee Roots and McDonald’s Basford. Huge thanks to all of you for your hard work!
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September 2023: Filming at St Aidan’s Church
So many smiles and laughs meeting the wonderful Christine and Paul from St Aidan’s Church in Basford! They have lots of plans to improve their church grounds for people and wildlife. We are documenting their progress and will be sharing their tips once our campaign launches. Huge thanks to Christine and Paul for having me!
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October 2023: All things compost!
We learnt all about compost this month with the help of Jenny from STAA. Once you know the basics, this is an easy thing to do in any wildlife garden to recycle all of that nutritious waste back into your soil, whilst also providing a snuggly warm habitat for lots of creatures! Jenny ran a workshop at Secret Garden in Nottingham to find out how to make the most of your compost heap and improve your soil fertility. She also helped us film a tutorial video which we’ll be sharing with you when our Green Your Neighbourhood campaign launches in the spring.
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April 2024: Litter picking and wildflower seed planting at an urban block of flats
Filming for our Green Your Neighbourhood campaign is back in full swing now that spring has sprung!
Last week we visited the wonderful residents of Byron Court in Nottingham. The residents got stuck into some weeding, planting, litter picking and wildflower seed sowing, as well as decorating bug hotels and bird boxes. Lots of fun and smiles had by all! We also met the lovely and inspirational Marie, who got her community involved with the project during lockdown – it’s been wonderful to hear how one small idea has grown. Marie and the residents, with the help of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, have achieved amazing things!
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April 2024: Wildlife gardening at STAA
More filming last week for our Green Your Neighbourhood campaign when I visited the wonderful Lucy from STAA!
Lucy shared lots of ways to make your community green space more wildlife friendly. It was the perfect location – STAA manage 4 individual plots at St Ann’s Allotments in Nottingham for wildlife, community, gardening and heritage. An amazing place!
Huge thanks to Lucy for spending time with us to create this film!
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May 2024: Secret Garden Space
We revisited the lovely Secret Garden Space at the Pythian Club in Nottingham. Since the last visit, the team there have made a number of changes to improve their space for wildlife, as well as introducing regular gardening sessions. These sessions have proved to be a huge success, helping people from the local community to learn new skills, meet new people and be in nature.
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May 2024: Wildlife friendly vegetable gardening
It was time to find out all about growing food in a wildlife-friendly way, so this month we visited the wonderful Andy Callow from Sherwood Garden Consultancy. He discussed ways to plan your allotment, ensuring it’s accessible to everyone. Andy gave tips on preparing your soil and choosing which crops to grow, as well as advice on how to garden with wildlife in mind. We got absolutely loads of footage and can’t wait to share his advice with you all!
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June 2024: Campaign launch!
The Green your Neighbourhood campaign has been launched! We’ve regularly been releasing our films on YouTube and social media. So make sure you give us a follow to make sure you don’t miss anything!
What happens next?
We are excited to have collaborated with Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust on this campaign as well as working with a number of community groups involved in Nextdoor Nature Nottingham. The project ran for a year, starting in July 2023, and we launched the campaign in early summer 2024. All of the films and resources will stay available on this website and on YouTube to continue to help individuals and community groups to Green their Neighbourhoods. Make sure you sign up to our newsletter to hear about future campaigns!