Our ambition is to make HGS the most biodiverse urban area in the UK

2024 sees the launch of “Britain’s Biggest Living Garden”, an ambitious project seeking to establish HGS as the most biodiverse area of urban Britain. “Britain’s Biggest Living Garden” will become a national flagship that showcases the impact communities can have on nurturing and supporting wildlife around them.

It is commonly thought that to impact biodiversity you either need a huge estate to “re-wild” or that you must accept an unruly garden that is neither usable or beautiful. These could not be further from the truth. 

In fact, domestic gardens are found to be an incredibly important hub of biodiversity. A seminal study by Dr Jennifer Owen recorded over 2,500 species in her modest Leicester garden, a density of species higher than in the African rainforest. In contrast to common beliefs around  “re-wilding”, the key to unlocking biodiversity in gardens is a wide range of well maintained and tended-to plants and habitats packed into a small area - an untended garden will, over time, become the domain of brambles, with limited benefit to wildlife. 

UK gardens make up an area that is larger than all UK wildlife reserves put together -equivalent to 1/5th the size of Wales. With ever increasing pressure from development, agriculture and pollution on the remaining countryside, gardens are becoming ever more important for our wildlife.

Gardens “link” together islands of habitat as green corridors, especially where there is a high density of interconnected gardens so wildlife can move freely between them.

Here HGS comes into its own. The founding principles of the suburb enshrined green space at the core of this urban environment, giving nearly every household access to a garden, surrounding houses with plentiful greens, parks and woodland and critically, connecting all those densely packed gardens together as one, through what may be the highest urban density of hedging in the UK.

Dr Steve Head is Founder Patron of the Wildlife Gardening Forum (WLGF), which has an excellent website full of information including tips on how to create and maintain a beautiful garden that also works for wildlife. He has kindly agreed to be our scientific lead on this project, and will be coordinating regular biodiversity audits so we can track progress. We’ve even had some early interest from TV.

So what does this mean in practice and how can you get involved?

• Join our community and take our 5 minute survey below to help us establish a database of what wildlife and features you have in your garden. You can also pre-register for our challenge scheme; sign up for more information and express interest in joining the team as a volunteer. After 250 entries we will draw a winner of a £50 voucher..

• Everyone with access to any outdoor space, however big or small can play a part in increasing biodiversity across the wider suburb. Even adopting just one of Steve’s top tips will make a difference. We’ll be launching a local “challenge” scheme where households can grade their gardens for being wildlife friendly, earn points and window stickers, and even have the chance to win some prizes

• On 29th April, Dr Steve Head will be giving a talk introducing the science behind Wildlife Gardening, and practical steps you can take to increase biodiversity in your garden. 7pm at St Judes, open to all.

• Excitingly, Revd Em at St Judes is hoping to find us a large patch of church land, which we can turn into a flagship community wildlife garden right at the heart of the suburb to create a shared space for all and a much needed hub for local residents.

• The ambition is to bring children right into the core of this project, and are hoping to establish children’s gardening clubs where they can learn the skills to be nature stewards of the future.

Together we can achieve something truly amazing here; making the Suburb a beacon of hope for wildlife in our changing world, engaging and inspiring our children - showing them that their individual actions can make a difference, bringing together our community and in the process gaining national recognition.