The Healthy By Nature Senior Ranger based in Nottinghamshire, Lucy, shares her latest project update.
One of the key Healthy by Nature ranger programme activities in Nottinghamshire is supporting the green space projects at Hopewood Adolescent Mental Health Unit. The unit is located in Nottingham itself and is a purpose-built site with lots of pockets of green space. So far, we have been focussing on a wildlife area based on an almost forgotten little section of woodland tucked away in a quiet corner of the site.
It has been slow, but satisfying, progress. We uncovered A LOT of rubbish and A LOT of brambles! We have made steady inroads through the year, but by late summer it was time for a big push. Our first mission has been to make the area safe so supervised sessions can take place with the young people to build many of the wildlife friendly features we hope to include such as bug hotels. So early in August, we held a ‘Big Hopewood Wildlife Area Week’ inviting staff and volunteers to join us. As part of this we tackled the big tasks, cleared the area and built the main access routes.
We had to work around another heatwave in Nottingham which changed how we would normally approach something like this. In the end, early morning starts and lots of pairs of hands meant we achieved all we set out to do. Now we have cleared the majority of rubbish and brambles as well as creating a proper woodland path and layout. We even spotted foxes and badgers on the wildlife camera which inspired us to keep going when the work got difficult! Our growing volunteer team will continue the next steps finishing the clearing work and making the space safe for everyone. We hope that we will be inviting young people in within a couple of months for some exciting autumnal activities in the area.