At the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, we are pleased to announce that we will be facilitating the setting up of a green health route in Marston, Oxford. As we spend our days highlighting all the fabulous projects on the NHS Forest sites, facilitating knowledge exchange through the website and the NHS Forest conference (book now for October!), it's great to be running a hands-on project ourselves.
Come to our conference on October 7th, 2014 at Whittingham and Goosnargh Sports and Social Club in Whittingham, Lancashire. The theme is Creating Healing Environments and we will be showcasing and sharing best practice in this area through presentations and workshops. Our hosts are Lancashire Care, who will be showing us around their award-winning grow your own project in the afternoon. The cost is a very reasonable £30. We look forward to welcoming old and new faces from all sectors of healthcare. We will also be presenting five awards with potential prizes on offer of £400.
Bluebell Woodland is a hospital-owned woodland which joined the NHS Forest in 2014 after planting 900 trees and starting a green gym on site. It features a five hectare woodland currently being improved by volunteers. The site is sandwiched between Aintree University NHS Trust Hospital and Altcourse Prison and forms part of the Communities Fazakerley Woods and Fields Nature Reserve. It is a vital part of the Liverpool green spaces mosaic and forms a link with other open spaces.
Here at the NHS Forest we are keen to involve staff, patients and the local community in using the green space created at each healthcare site. The Community Land Advisory Service can help sites that need advice on how to make land available for the local community and provide support with any issues that may arise.
The Community Land Advisory Service is operating across the UK and is able to help through
Lancashire Care joined the NHS Forest in 2013 starting up a Grow Your Own project and restoring an orchard at their Guild Park site. Since then the project has continued to go from strength to strength with projects throughout the year to engage staff, patients and the local community in planting and growning fruit and vegetables.
Here at the NHS Forest we have been busy recording all the fantastic tree planting that our sites have been doing since the season started back in November 2013. Our tree counter has now reached 36,000 trees which is a great achievement. Many of the trees recorded were part of our 2@2 on NHS Sustainability Day with nearly 50 sites getting involved in planting and sites such as Lancashire Care and Airedale hospital planting over 300 trees.
A number of new sites joined the NHS Forest this year including:
Nearly 500 trees were planted on 27th March around the country for the NHS Sustainability Day of Action. Those planting trees for the NHS Forest's 2@2 campaign included Prime Minister David Cameron and Sue Bailey, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists at the Warneford Hospital in Oxford and the NHS's Sustainable Development Unit, whose team planted a giant redwood.
Lancashire Care have marked this year's NHS Sustainability Day with a series of Sustainability Roadshows to sign up 'Green Champions' at several Trust sites. The roadshows took place on the Sustainability Day itself - March 27th - and were a fantastic success. At the Trust HQ, several people came forward to make green pledges - ranging from composting their tea bags to swapping to an electric car - as well as signing up to be workplace sustainability reps.
41 NHS Forest sites across the UK are getting ready for planting 2 trees @ 2pm on NHS Sustainability Day, 27th March 2014. With 371 trees being planted throughout the day, many of which were sponsored by the Great Outdoor Gym Company, it looks set to be an exciting day!
The sites involved in the day are:
Broomfield Hospital
NHS Gloucestershire
Leasowes Intermediate Care Centre, Sandwells and West Birmingham NHS Trust
Rowley Regis Hospital, Sandwells and West Birmingham NHS Trust
Mersey Care
Lancashire Care
Airedale Hospital
At the start of this 2013/14 planting season, South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) has planted 15 trees at 8 of its sites including: Adderbury, Andover, Basingstoke, Kidlington, Portsmouth, Reading, Ringwood and Whitchurch. Organised by their Green Team coordinator Brian Miller, the trees planted were a mixture of fruit and broadleaf trees with Ambulance staff helping to plant them at each site.
