Our grounds maintenance team are continually working to enhance the green spaces around our customers’ homes. Whether that’s through the grass cutting season or turning an overgrown area into a wildflower meadow.
Over the last few years we’ve planted almost 20,000 m2 of wildflowers to promote biodiversity. Wildflowers provide food for bees, butterflies and other pollinators and on one summer day, one acre of wildflower meadow can produce 1kg of nectar sugar - that’s enough to support almost 96,000 honey bees a day!
It's important we involve our customers in what we do with green spaces near their home. So last year we spoke to customers in Crich who told us they’d like nearby green spaces to be spruced up.
To bring the project to life, we worked with the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and Transition Crich, a community group made up of local residents. Transition Crich joined our grounds maintenance team to remove part of a grass verge and create a garden bed filled with plants and shrubs. Wildflowers were sown in another space and in a third location six apple trees were planted to hopefully result in free fruit for the community in the future.
We also worked with community group Ripley Wild Flowerers last year, a small group of local people concerned about the lack of wildflowers and suitable habitats for bees and insects.
Peter Eley, volunteer at Ripley Wild Flowerers said: “From the group's start, Futures has been our biggest supporter and we’ve worked together on ten of their sites. The orchard at Field Terrace was the latest addition to the improvement for wildlife, with bulb planting and a large wildflower meadow as well.”
Janene Haywood, Community Engagement Project Delivery Officer at Futures said: “It was vital that we involved customers in co-creating these projects. The areas are near their homes so we wanted to understand not only how the spaces are used but also the importance of these spaces to them. Their input has influenced changes to local areas creating better spaces for them and the environment."
