Building greener street communities is easy to do. It is up to all of us to make our towns and cities more environmentally sustainable one street at a time.
On Tuesday 9th January 2024 the Sustainable St Albans Our Planet Our Future (OPOF) project team held a speaker and discussion evening at the Plough and Harrow pub, Harpenden, on the subject of Building Greener Street Communities. A good turnout gathered to hear speakers from Wilderhood Watch and the Sustainable St Albans Meet Your Neighbours Projects, Each talk was followed by lively round-table and room-wide discussions.
Talk 1: Turn your street into a wildlife friendly corridor
About Wilderhood Watch
Our first speaker was Helen of the Wilderhood Watch street project. Wilderhood Watch is a St Albans based project that helps and encourages residents of a street to create corridors for wildlife using their gardens and other small green spaces. You can read the recent Sustainable St Albans blog introducing the Wilderhood Watch project here. Helen talked about her own experience of setting up a project on the Harpenden street where she lives and how this has inspired her to want to support other streets in Harpenden to do the same.Â
Helen’s Harpenden Wilderhood Watch street
Helen talked about how her street had used the Wilderhood Watch website, information and contacts to share and plant cuttings of pollinator-friendly plants. She also talked about other ways her neighbours want to improve habitats, for example getting together and planting a hedgerow or providing safe passage for hedgehogs under fences.
Wilderhood Watch links neighbours
Helen has particularly enjoyed getting to know her neighbours better through the last few months, discussing wildlife sightings and working together. She is looking forward to trying out her neighbour’s bat detector and maybe holding a public information or plant sharing stall at a nearby park.
Discussing other green spaces
Attendees enjoyed a discussion about their own streets and local wildlife after Helen spoke. Other points raised included ideas for maintaining shared green spaces such as road sides and verges and the No Mow May initiative. A number of apps and websites were suggested (listed at the base of this post).
Talk 2: Meet Your Neighbours
Street-based activities bring sustainability
Our second speaker of the evening was Nicola, project coordinator for Sustainable St Albans Meet Your Neighbours projects. Nicola shared with us the not-obvious connection between closing your road for a Playing Out session or a street party, or running any other kind of street-based activity – and sustainability.
The Joyful Environmentalist
Nicola talked about how street gatherings fit into Isabel Losada’s concept of The Joyful Environmentalist, influencing other people to live more sustainably by connecting them to the people and place where they live. She then discussed the benefits for streets where neighbours know each other well:- inclusivity, connection, community and caring. You can read a previous Sustainable St Albans blog about the connection of street parties and sustainability here. In that blog, Nicola spells out the benefits to the environment of a tight-knit street including promoting the local economy, local food, sustainable transport and lower carbon footprints.
Get help to organise street gatherings
Nicola publicised the Meet Your Neighbours free information sessions this spring where residents can find out how to organise a road closure and get support to pull their community together. The first of these events is on Monday 22nd January at 8pm and can be booked here
Discussing other benefits
Further discussion after the talk included the benefits of children developing social interactions, bridging generational divides, and older people being less isolated when neighbours socialise together. Attendees had lots of ideas for street activities including street WhatsApp groups, swapping and rehoming food/toys/books/plants and lending knowledge or tools.
Let’s make our own streets better for humans and wildlife
In conclusion, making our own road a better place to live for both humans and nature is easy to do. We can all do more to connect with our neighbours as well as making small changes to encourage wildlife to live alongside us.
Next Event: 12th March
Our Planet Our Future looks forward to welcoming you to our next event ‘Discover Your Home’ on Tuesday 12th March at the same venue exploring heat loss, energy efficiency and using a thermal imaging camera – available to borrow from Sustainable St Albans.
Find out more
Our Planet Our Future
Find more speaker and discussion events on the Our Planet Our Future webpage here.
Wilderhood Watch details
- Website: www.wilderhoodwatch.org
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wilderhoodwatch/
Meet Your Neighbours
Find ideas on how to build the community where you live on the Meet Your Neighbours page here. Their next event on 22nd January is a free zoom information session on how to run some short street gatherings for play and neighbourly chat on your street using the St Albans District Playing Out scheme. Find details of this and other events here.
Other wildlife resources discussed at the event
- Join in with the citizen surveys such as the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, 26-28th Jan or the British Trust For Ornithology (BTO) Garden Birdwatch each week
- Count pollinating insects with with FITCountÂ
- Identify what you see or hear using free phone apps like Seek for plants or MerlinBirdID for bird calls.
- Watch out for local bat walks in the summer – previous events were hosted at Harpenden Common (Harpenden Town Council), Heartwood Forest (Woodland Trust), Highfield Park (Highfield Park Trust) and Jersey Farm Woodland (Sandridge Parish Council)
With thanks to Wilderhood Watch for kindly allowing us to use their photos for this post.
Let’s start by stopping the building of thousands new homes on green belt and agricultural land !