Nature-friendly parks: an update

We're now over halfway through our parks assessments. After getting caught in a sudden deluge in Hamilton Park, we've been lucky with the weather and we've completed data collection in Evington, Spinney Hill, Willowbrook and Humberstone Parks. We'll be returning to Hamilton Park in July to conduct surveys of park users. 

Assessing the wildlife habitats in each park has been a fascinating experience. We've found a lot of diversity and some species that we didn't expect to see or hear. Two local botanists have accompanied us on these visits and conducted full plant surveys. A member of the local bat group has also been coming along to help us find and record bats and the keen birdwatchers in our group have been listening and looking for birds. We will share all of the information we have collected with the City Council. While we walk round, we all complete an assessment sheet with categories for wet areas, trees, grass management, flowers, bats, birds re-wilded areas, interpretation boards and harms (litter etc). One definite piece of good news is that we've seen no sign of herbicide use in the parks this year!

At our Saturday stalls, we've been conducting a questionnaire to find out people's experiences of nature in their local park and their opinions on the park's management. There will be an online version of this survey soon, if you've not managed to come along to one of our stalls and still want to have your say. To encourage people to come and talk to us, we've been making seed bombs with children (and some adults too), so that people can help to spread wildflowers in their gardens and their streets! These have been very popular. 

Finally, we've now come up with a definition for what we think constitutes a nature-friendly park, which we're using as a guide for our assessments:

A nature-friendly park creates as much space as possible for a diversity of wild plants, insects, birds and animals, while also being accessible to the surrounding human community and encouraging people to appreciate the wildlife on their doorstep. 

We'd love to hear what you think!

Highfields Centre garden spring clean

We've been back to the Highfields Centre garden for a spring clean. Everything has been growing well with the wet spring so we had to remove a lot of weeds and also do a big litter-pick, but it's now looking like a garden again!

March for the Earth - Earth Day

When in London can you see people dressed as parrots, giraffes, lions, tigers mixed in with foxes, and badgers all marching through the streets accompanied by birdsong being played on phones?

On Earth Day of course! Leicester Friends of the Earth joined thousands of people on the peaceful march through the streets of London on Earth Day (April 22^nd 2023) to raise awareness of the plight of nature due to global warming. 

It was a wonderful day, the sun shone, we met old and new friends, sang songs and listened to a speech by Chris Packham. We also took part in a ‘die-in’ where everyone lay down in the road looking at the sky, listening to the birdsong, left with their own thoughts about what we want for the planet – it was very emotive.

But although it was a wonderful day my daughter Hannah captured it all when she said - she looks forward to the day when we don’t have to march for nature – when everyone cares and fights to save the planet.