Past Projects - Working with People

We've been working in partnership with Severn Trent and the Environment Agency to install five rain gardens at community buildings across the town and create two depave gardens in the market triangle. 

Three metal planters were designed for the Forest Community church building, which is used throughout the week as a food bank, play group space and warm space. The planters were filled with plants that are not only good for pollinators but are tactile too, creating a calming sensory space for children to interact with nature.

Two rain gardens were installed at the Miners Welfare hall, constructed from locally-sourced timber. The planters were built, lined and planted up by staff and volunteers, and drainpipes from the roof have been diverted to allow rainwater to flow from the roof into the gardens.

Two large depave areas in the town centre will not just tackle the problems of flash-flooding and run off, but provide a highly visible talking point too. Once the plants have filled out it will provide an attractive and pollinator-friendly place, right in the middle of town.

Click here to find out more about rain gardens

Barton Street nature highway

Nature Highways create corridors for wildlife to travel between larger existing green spaces, often through urban built up spaces that can be deserts for wildlife. They create connectivity for wildlife, such as pollinating insects and birds. They also improve the physical and mental wellbeing of local residents. Benefits to people can include improved air quality, opportunities for getting physically involved in green infrastructure improvements and maintenance, but most importantly can have positive impacts on people's mental wellbeing. Many studies show that just viewing nature can have a positive impact on our brains, helping reduce anxiety and stress and increasing attention capacity, creativity and our ability to connect with each other.

Although Gloucestershire and Gloucester residents are fortunate in having large amounts of accessible green space in many areas, this is not the case universally across Gloucester and some wards have below the minimum green space standard (set by the City Council). Barton Street is located in one of these wards, which also sits within the 10% most deprived areas nationally on the indices of multiple deprivation, but also within the 10% most deprived nationally for health deprivation and disability. Barton is a very multicultural ward, with over 50 languages spoken, which also creates challenges for health. Barton Street, which runs through the centre of Barton and is a hub of activity for local residents with shops, a doctors surgery and police station, is a main route through the city of Gloucester and as a result has poor air quality, which exceeds air quality standards.

Funding was given by the Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group to implement green infrastructure and artwork along Barton Street, over a year period. In this time, GWT installed three large planters with wildflowers for pollinators, re-planted current planters, mini-planters have been made and planted up for businesses, the doctors surgery has been planted up, community artwork has been dotted along the street, and a mini-orchard has been planted. Over the final month, over 500 bulbs were planted, bird boxes were hung, wildflowers were sewn, and a large mural was painted on a bare wall. Local residents and businesses will care for the plants, and hopefully both wildlife and the community will benefit from these positive changes.

Return to the Hill

Since 2013 the Trust has been working, in partnership with Gloucester City Council, at Robinswood Hill Country Park in Gloucester to improve engagement by local communities with this green space. We have run events, education sessions and volunteer days.

‘Return to the Hill’ is a two-year project which began in January 2021 supported by the ‘National Lottery Heritage Fund’, Gloucester City Council and Gloucestershire Gateway Trust. Working with local partners such as Age UK, Star College, and the World Café, this project aims to make the reserve a place for everyone in the local community.

There are three main arms to the project, all with the aim of making nature more accessible to all:

1. Memories of Robinswood Hill

Collecting stories, images and memories of the site from local people in the community. This was displayed as an exhibition in our new building.

2. Improving Accessibility of the Hill

We began Tramper mobility scooter for hire, and worked with Star College to look at wheelchair friendly routes. We developed some ‘all weather’ explorer backpacks and offer welly hire so that the site is easy to enjoy year-round.

3. Increasing diversity

We developed some ‘wildlife champion’ volunteer roles to help us think about how we can reach out to members of our community who don’t always know about us or think of visiting. 

Nature Tots
A monthly ‘Nature Tots’ group has been launched, running outdoor activities for pre-schoolers to enjoy. This is building on the success of our other groups at Crickley Hill, Greystones Farm and in the Forest of Dean. Check for upcoming sessions on our events page.

To find out more, watch this short film

In December 2021, the Our Bright Future (OBF) project came to an end after 6 successful years working with over 3,500 young people aged 11-24.  Amongst the many achievements of this project, we were able to support young people in achieving over 1,200 AQA certificate in areas varying from basic woodworking skills to wildlife friendly gardening.

Our Bright Future, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, allowed Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, in partnership with Avon Wildlife Trust, to work towards the following aims:

• Young people value and benefit from an awareness of local wildlife and a connection to nature
• Young people develop skills and experience for employment in a greener economy
• Green spaces are improved for people and wildlife
• Young people act as catalysts for change for the environment and communities

The OBF sessions gave young people a fantastic opportunity to make a real difference to their local community and school. The participants also had the opportunity to earn AQA certificates through activities they take part in at the Wildlife Workshops and in school sessions.

Read more about the project

We have been working with the Podsmead (Gloucester) community since 2016 at the Milton Avenue Green Space. This is a great space for wildlife with a balancing pond, small woodland and wet grassland. Surrounded by housing, but full of wildlife, this green space had become overgrown and unloved. Working with the community the Trust has improved habitats, created interpretation features and increased usage by local people. This work was in partnership with Podsmead Big Local.

Find out more by watching this short film

Working with the Environment Agency and a team of hard-working volunteers, five rain gardens have been installed across Gloucester. You can find them at the Friendship Café and City Farm in Barton, and at Kingsholm Stadium, home to Gloucester Rugby Club. 

Interpretation and leaflets accompany the rain gardens to provide information on how people can create their own rain garden or use rain water in a more sustainable way.

Join Holly Turner, GWT Engagement Project Officer, and Ollie Thorley, Gloucester Rugby winger, at Kingsholm Stadium as they have a look at the rain gardens at the stadium in this short film.

Find out more about rain gardens

Launched in June 2021 and concluding in March 2022, the project was funded by Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioners and in partnership with Young Gloucestershire.

It demonstrated the preventative mental health benefits of nature for children and working in Gloucester, Cheltenham and the Forest of Dean. Wild nature activities were delivered for children aged 5 - 14 years that had been struggling with low level mental health issues, such as anxiety or depression.

Activities included bush craft, wild art and foraging. They built the children's confidence, social skills and team working, and mental wellbeing was monitored throughout the 5 weeks.

Throughout 2020 and 2021 we worked with local community volunteers on this small urban green space, on the corner of Stroud Road and Tuffley Avenue in Gloucester. The garden was planted with roses as a memorial garden, and has an accessible footpath running around the outside of it. It is a popular site for locals to exercise, and working with residents GWT has been working to make the garden a more wildlife friendly space that can be enjoyed by people and nature. 

Fruit trees have been planted, insect and bird homes installed, flower beds seeded with wildflowers and native bulbs. Also existing vegetation kept under control. Local volunteers will continue to maintain this space, with support from Gloucester City Council.

Small sites such as this can still be incredibly important for our wildlife to thrive. They can form important corridors through urban spaces, helping wildlife to move throughout our towns and cities to more wildlife rich habitats. Gloucester City is fortunate to have two nature reserves within it's boundary (Alney Island and Robinswood Hill). Places like Tuffley Rose garden can help connect these nature reserves, allowing insects, and birds to safely move across the city. 

Nature on Prescription was a course being offered to people who have suffered a cardiac event. It was about improving fitness, supporting local wildlife, and reaping the health benefits of spending time in nature. Sessions are in beautiful places in Gloucester and the Forest of Dean and give people the chance to connect with others who’ve had a similar experience, learn about wildlife around them, and improve their fitness by walking and taking part in conservation activities.  In turn, this helps to protect habitats and support wildlife to thrive.

This project complimented the existing Cardiac Rehabilitation Programme by providing an alternative for people who prefer to be outside. It is in the pilot phase at the moment and is the first time the NHS have funded a nature-based intervention for physical health in England. It is based on a strong collaborative process with the NHS and Gloucester Local Nature Partnership. 

It was funded by Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group, and we continue our relationship with the CCG looking at other collaboration projects.

Hedgehogs are one of the UK’s fastest declining mammal species, now classed as vulnerable to extinction, and urban areas have been shown to support particularly important populations. Over two years the Hedgehog Highway project brought three communities together in Gloucester and Cheltenham to improve hedgehog habitat connectivity.

The project engaged residents in neighbourhood-scale action to increase linkages for hedgehogs between gardens and green spaces, and tested the effectiveness of widely-used hedgehog holes in increasing hedgehog movement. This included making small holes in fences to allow hedgehogs to pass through and making gardens more hedgehog friendly.

Residents were asked to survey their gardens for hedgehogs before the improvements were made, then re-survey their gardens after to see if hedgehogs were now more present. 

After installing the hedgehog holes in fences, in 2019, the following year there was a 39% increase in positive hedgehog sightings and a 21% increase in the number of garden hedgehog access points within the study gardens.

Hedgehog Highway was kindly funded by the People's Trust for Endangered Species, and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.

Read the full report 

Working with local residents, Podsmead Big Local and Gloucester City Council since 2016, an underused green space was transformed into a haven for people and wildlife, whilst also upskilling residents to maintain the space themselves.

We are continuing to support local residents helping with the management of their local green spaces, to make them better places for wildlife and people.

You can read more about this work in this 2019 blog post.

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust is extremely grateful for the support from Gloucestershire County Council’s Active Together Fund for this project, which ran between April 2016 and March 2017.

The project created a nature-themed play trail around Greystones Farm and Nature Reserve, encouraging families to become more physically active by exploring the site to discover the different play structures. The trail was based around six natural features: a carved owl starting post, a carved log climbing frame, a balancing snake, balancing posts, a den building area and stepping stones in the river. It is supported by the provision of 40 children’s explorer kits, provided through the project which contain bug viewers, dipping nets, magnifying glasses and high-quality ID sheets, and which will be available for loan from the centre. The project successfully delivered a programme of after school, holiday and weekend wild play sessions to introduce local children and their families to the play trail and demonstrated the kind of free, fun activities they can undertake at Greystones during their own time.

Over the course of the year, 1085 children and their families used the trail through organised events. Five families were monitored over the year to determine whether knowledge of and access to the trail had affected their levels of activity. The results of this, albeit with a small sample size, suggest that the trail is encouraging greater levels of activity and connectedness to nature. 40 Explorer Packs were put together to complement the play trail, and these were found to be successful ways of helping families to engage more deeply with the site.

Rhe Going the Extra Mile (GEM) project aimed to engage with and support individuals in Gloucestershire who are currently dealing with circumstances that are potentially causing barriers to work and move these people closer towards education, training, volunteering or work, including self-employment. This programme was a unique partnership of community based organisations, managed by Gloucestershire Gateway Trust on behalf of Gloucestershire County Council.

The GEM Project was jointly funded by the Big Lottery Fund and the European Social Fund.

Our Wild for Nature project aimed to help women with multiple and complex needs, whose disadvantage means that accessing nature is difficult. This new approach uses the restorative benefits of helping wildlife to support people create a better future for themselves and their families through creative contact with wild places. We ran a series of fully funded 6 day courses to connect people to their local countryside. The courses will improve their wellbeing and relationships and help them to access other support and courses, including volunteering opportunities with us and other local organisations.

This work was kindly funded by The Pilgrim Trust, the Langdale Trust, the W F Southall Trust and the Stock Exchange Veterans Charity Association.

Brighter Futures ran Wildlife and Habitat Management course's lasting six-week's in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Tewkesbury, Bourton-on-the-Water, Cirencester and the Forest of Dean. The programme was designed for long-term unemployed people and for those who feel marginalised due to learning difficulties, contact with the criminal justice system, social isolation or mental health issues.

Brighter Futures delivered significant improvements in wellbeing, transferable skills, motivation and employability while building lasting social networks between people who otherwise would not have met. Watch our short film about a recent course to see the impact that the programme can have. 

Brighter Futures was kindly funded by the Gloucestershire Police and Crime Commissioner Fund, Morrisons Foundation, Gloucester City Homes, Santander Foundation, the Langdale Trust, the Winstone Charitable Trust, the D'Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, Thames Water Community Fund, Gloucestershire High Sheriffs' Fund, The Rowlands Trust, the Rotary in Gloucester and the Statham Family Charitable Trust.

See what we got up to during our Wildlife and Habitat Management course in 2017 as part of the project. 

Watch the short video

This project brought people together in their local communities through shared activity, improving their local area, fostering pride and aid community cohesion by developing connections to each other, and by bringing nature to the doorsteps of Gloucester’s most deprived areas. We ran public awareness events, to bring the community together to learn about wildflowers and pollinators and how to increase them in their local areas through a range of options for those without gardens; We have run workshops for members of the community of all ages and abilities to work together towards shared community aims to increase access to nature through creating wildflower planter, window boxes and hanging baskets that the residents can take home to bring nature to their doorstep. We created a bee metropolis with homes for solitary bees and wildflower planting in the centre of Gloucester promoting community cohesion and helping the plight of wildflowers and their pollinators. We would like to thank the supporters of the project who included Gloucester City Council, Grow Wild and the Charles Irving Charitable Trust.

Although this project complete in 2019, and the bee sculpture / home was relocated from Kings Square in Gloucester in 2020 to make way for re-development. The bee has now found it's permanent home in the garden of St Mary DeCrypt on Southgate Street in Gloucester city centre. Staff and volunteers at St Mary DeCrypt are working hard to make the garden a wildlife haven for nature and people. The bee is a great new addition and will be a home to visiting insects. 

Since 2013 the Trust has been working in partnership with Gloucester City Council at Robinswood Hill Country Park in Gloucester to improve engagement by local communities with this green space.

Over the course of the project we ran events, education sessions and also volunteer days. Although this project has now finished we continue to run activities at the site, in partnership with the council, and our head office is also based at Robinswood Hill. Activities continue to be funded by Gloucestershire Gateway Trust.

We also launched a new engagement project at Robinswood Hill called Return to the Hill.

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust's Engagement Team support communities to improve and maintain local green spaces for wildlife. We worked in Kingsway, Gloucester, during 2018 - 2020, helping local residents learn about wildlife and enhance habitat. We worked in partnership with the Kingsway Wildlife and Sustainability Group, 

This work was funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Gloucestershire County Council and Gloucester City Council and was completed in 2019.

The Kingsway Wildlife and Sustainability group still run events, volunteer days and a variety of activities to make Kingsway a better place for wildlife. 

During 2019 we used our knowledge, enthusiasm and understanding of the natural world to provide disadvantaged children and young people from Gloucestershire Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (GARAS) with opportunities to play, explore and improve their local green spaces and the natural world they find themselves in, in their new home in a new innovative project.

We ran after-school and after-college sessions with nature-based activities to help child refugees and asylum seekers to feel a connection to their new local environment. This worked towards our aims of connecting people with wildlife and engaging everyone, no matter their background, in taking action for nature. This helped children and young people integrate into their new community as well as help them to build a connection to wildlife and the natural world.

This wonderful project was kindly funded by St James’s Place Charitable Foundation and the Holroyd Foundation. This project completed in December 2019, however we are continuing our engagement with Refugee communities through other projects. See our Case Studies section for more details on the impact this project had on the Tazini family.