World Environment Day – Manor Road Community Garden Project
In honour of today being World Environment Day, we wanted to bring awareness to some of our work within Stonewater that we do promote community engagement with the natural environment and to protect our natural world.
World Environment Day is an international day to bring awareness to the protection of our environment and to encourage people to take action to help protect it.
Today provides us an opportunity to reflect on our environmental impact and showcase one of the projects we have undertaken to improve our natural environment.
Sustainability is always at the heart of what we do here at Stonewater and means more to us than just making our new and existing homes more energy-efficient. We want to offer our customers avenues to learn about and engage with nature so together we can have a positive influence on our environment.
Part of this year’s World Environment Day theme is ‘Land Restoration’, and we wanted to take the time to showcase one such example of this is in the work we have done at a site in Swindon, working in partnership with the Local Authority and Wiltshire Wildlife trust to transform some of our land into a community hub focusing on learning and awareness around the natural world.
Manor Road Community Garden Project
I am very excited to share the development of an exciting partnership project in Swindon. Stonewater, Swindon Borough Council, South Swindon Parish Council, and Wiltshire Wildlife Trust will join forces to transform an overgrown and underused area of our land into a community-focused, safe, and secure place for growing and learning.
I recently spent a fantastic day on-site with my colleague Helen Holland, meeting our partners and spending the day undertaking extensive clearance and restoration of the site with the aim to develop it into a positive asset for the community. We were joined by volunteers and members of the local community and together managed to clear the land more than we expected. Thanks to the expert knowledge of our Wildlife Trust partners, we even got to learn interesting facts about mining bees!!
This project aims to support the wider ambitions being developed by our partners locally, further connecting fragmented habitats and improving the health and wellbeing of surrounding communities. Our vision ensures inclusivity for families and those with limited mobility and we will be restoring existing paths as well as the refurbishment of existing raised beds, polytunnel, guttering and improving the compost area.
When the on-site preparation is complete, we aim to provide a safe and well-maintained space for everyone to be able to connect with nature. We will be providing access to training and education, enabling others to learn new skills and will be providing on-site volunteering opportunities. Our plan is to bring our local and wider communities together by providing a variety of activities based around planting and growing food as well as the importance of protecting our precious urban habitats for nature to thrive. Activities we plan to host on-site include healthy eating cooking lessons, seed sowing and composting workshops with an ambition to open access for wellbeing and gardening group’s as well as local schools.
This is such a fantastic example of how collaboration can benefit our communities whilst supporting biodiversity and natures recovery in our urban environment. We look forward to sharing progress with everyone, recognising the importance of sharing our successes and lessons learnt internally as well as with other social housing providers and partners.
This project aligns with Stonewater’s Neighbourhoods Team Vision where we aim to have healthy, happy, vibrant neighbourhoods where people get along and feel connected to each other and for our customers and their neighbours to be part of resilient communities and live in places they love and are proud of. We will be organising another clearance day in September and will be an opportunity for Stonewater colleagues to join us.
