Our workshop group thought our aim should be to move from being the least green to the greenest ward in the borough.  The following are ideas of how we can achieve this:

Improving the look of individual streets by:

Planting edible flowers and herbs below trees

Getting external organisations to plant new trees/bushes

Tending to existing trees/bushes to ensure safety of street users

People using their front gardens as plant nurseries, plants from which could go on to be sold

Offering to share your wheelie bins to prevent littering- advertising that they can be used by members of the public

It was felt that this could best be achieved by residents getting together and deciding how best to improve the look of their own street and then going on to work towards achieving it.

The Big Local could encourage this by offering money to individual streets to work towards improving their street and running a competition for the greenest street in the ward.  This competition could also be sponsored by local estate agents.

This money and competition could be offered alongside the offer of advice about what best to plant where from either local gardening clubs or individuals.

Tool sharing was thought to be a good first step before getting together a tool bank.  This could be a database system or a sell or swap style website specifically for tool sharing or using the existing sell or swap website.

In the medium term we could start to map unused and potential new green spaces with a view to working towards using and improving these.

Author: Sarah Wason
Partnership Member