Wild Stroud Open Gardens

 Thank you to all the lovely people who opened their gardens last weekend and thank you to all the lovely people who came to visit and see what is being done and why, ask lots of questions and tell us about what you are doing in your gardens.

Wildlife needs you and your garden to help

Making Nature Welcome 

• Commit some time and energy to make your garden (more) wildlife-friendly.
• Use our wildlife garden Assessment Questionnaire to find out how wildlife friendly your garden is and what else you can do.  Minimum donation £1
• Act on the report you receive and make it your garden even better.

Why this is important

If you have come to this website it’s probably because you already understand the impact that the massive loss of habitat (builds, roads etc.), the overuse of chemical fertilisers and pesticides are having on our wildlife.  Restoring and rebuilding is going to take time and energy.  We have a dream of huge sections of the Stroud District becoming nature corridors and nature reserves providing habitat that supports the life cycles of all of our wildlife.  We care about everything; the midges and aphids which provide food for birds, the worms and fungi which look after our soil, we could go on and on…

We need you to help

This project is not about walking away from your garden and letting it go wild.  Our gardens have many functions and it’s all about how to get the balance right.   Gardening itself is a wonderful pastime, an opportunity to create what you want in your garden.  It’s a place for kids to play and learn about nature.  It’s definitely a place – British weather permitting to sit and enjoy a meal, a BBQ and maybe a glass of wine on a summers’ evening.

Stroud Landscape Project

We’re excited to be working with the National Trust on this project.  The aim is to build wildlife corridors through the urban areas of Stroud to connect nature reserves and farmland, allowing wildlife to move to new habitats.  You can read about the National Trust’s Stroud Landscape Project here.

Wild Stroud’s contribution to this project is to encourage and inspire you and your neighbours to plant at least one square metre of one of the plants on the National Trust list in your garden or community space.  If you can do more so much the better.  We have worked with the National Trust to identify their key plants for the corridors and then rationalised this list. to the eight we think would work well in local gardens.  You can see and download the whole list here.  Wild Stroud Urban Corridor (opens in new window)

Get involved

Wild Stroud will be setting a goal for the number of square metres we add this year.  We are looking for people to get involved in the following ways

• Sign up to plant a square metre of one or more of these plants in your garden or your pots
• Grow plug plants from seed to share with the community
• Share the story within your community to get more involvement
• Teach others how to grow from seed

Register your interest and receive updates and news – Register here