It's been great to start working on this exciting and engaging project (that's me in the photo above, fourth from left, with the team from Groundwork) - in March we set up a weekly gardening club at the Bushmead Community Hub where local people of all ages can learn about growing vegetables, how to maintain and improve gardens for the benefit of wildlife, and have had help from Groundwork’s Green Team - a project for unemployed local people, offering landscape training for those involved.
We continue to work alongside Luton Borough Council and the conservation volunteers to deliver more work parties now being run monthly and we are supporting the Friends of Bradgers Hill with a relaunch programme of tasks and litter picking days. Volunteers at these tasks have helped to lay a hedge at one of the main routes into Bradgers Hill and cleared significant areas of scrub exposing the mediaeval lynchets - the longest in Bedfordshire. We have plans to install interpretation that will help explain the significance to those passing through the site, in addition to the ecological interest found there.
Working with young people
Thanks to a partnership with the Luton Youth Network we have helped start a women's only walking group in the town and plan to deliver wellbeing and wildlife walks for a variety of different groups in the months ahead.
We are also working with the Tokko Youth Centre in Luton, another youth group, to lead conservation tasks and walks for young people during April and May, and hope this will lead to a long-term programme of activity for young people; we are working with the Chilterns Conservation Board to include this as part of the Chalkscapes Community Engagement initiative. It was this initiative and an exciting partnership with Action for Conservation that allowed us to run to tree planting days with local schools – Cardinal Newman and Stopsley High Schools joined us to plant 300 new saplings as part of the Hay Wood expansion project at Stopsley Common. The common leads onto Bradgers Hill and the wood shows how varied the habitat is with great opportunities for engagement. The children competed to see who could plant the most trees!
For any schools wanting to know what we can offer do get in touch via our contacts below.
Get in contact
We'd love to know your thoughts on our project - do get in touch with us via email: Matt.Sutcliffe@wildlifebcn.org or my colleague Noreen Iqbal Noreen.Iqbal@wildlifebcn.org - we look forward to hearing from you.
Upcoming events include a Birdsong and Bluebell walk on 14 May, and a Wildlife Explorer Day on 4 June, open to all the family to learn about wildlife on Bradgers Hill - do join us, we look forward to meeting you.
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