Wildlife Gardening Forum: conference 21 Oct 13
TTT joined this bi-annual conference yesterday at the University Hospital, Coventry. The Wildflife Garden Forum is a voluntary UK-wide group including local and national projects and charities, researchers and academics, local authorities and government agencies. The Forum’s intention is to share evidence and practice about the value of wildlife to gardening (and people) – and vice versa.
Yesterday’s conference topic was ‘Human Health and Wildlife Gardening’ – please see the agenda here. An excellent range of speakers covered up-to-date research and personal experience of the links between our own health, wellbeing and happiness, and the health and biodiversity of wildlife.
It’s a topic that’s one of the keys to sustainability in Tooting.
A very exciting feature of the day was the focus on wildlife and nature’s role across the NHS itself: including softer benefits such as the value of amenity and beauty, and harder evidence including faster recovery times. The University Hospital’s Sustainable Development Manager gave us a tour of some of the easy-to-see elements of working with nature: the Hospital has created a wild space of reeds and young trees, next to a small river newly-populated by otters.
We have some good new contacts and ideas for taking forward these possibilities in Tooting – in a very different setting from a new-build hospital, but still with plenty of potential.
Please get in contact with TTT if you would like to join us to explore the links between local wildlife, and our health and wellbeing.
PS: have a look at our short report from a Forum meeting last year. The Forum is developing its website, in the short term info can be found here.
And, from last Sunday in the Community Garden – when the sun was out for the exact timings of the session:
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| Graham was given this birch seedling at the Environmental Association for Universites and Colleges conference several years ago. It’s new home is the Community Garden – thanks! |
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| Four ‘new’ people came along to the Garden having heard about us at the Foodival. Welcome! And we also gathered more leaves to experiment with for papermaking |