Bringing back nature
Daily contact with nature is linked to less stress, better mood and better health. People want healthier and greener streets but they often lack the time or skills to maintain new planting.
That’s where a Postcode Gardener can help, employed to green up streets in one postcode area and bring neighbours together.
The Co-operative Bank
Protecting the natural world has been at the heart of The Co-operative Bank’s unique, customer-led Ethical Policy for over 30 years, driven by their customers’ concerns for biodiversity and the environment.
Through our partnership, we're putting Postcode Gardeners into the most nature deprived neighbourhoods, to bring back nature and bring communities together.
What does a Postcode Gardener do?
Postcode Gardeners are experts at getting people outdoors, socialising and working together. They help grow plants for flowers, food and wildlife along streets, in front gardens and anywhere else people can enjoy them.
They co-ordinate the plan for the postcode, do some gardening themselves and give volunteers gardening skills so that everyone can dig in and create greener streets.
Postcode Gardeners in action
Street planters, made by the community, giving space for year round planting.
Bringing school and youth groups into gardening sessions, showing local young people some gardening skills.
Even small areas of a car park can be filled with edible plants for the community to enjoy.
Our Postcode Gardeners are working where they're needed most
We've identified new areas that would really benefit from some street gardening, by mapping out places that lack green space and are most at risk of air pollution, flooding and urban heating.
In partnership with The Co-operative Bank, we're funding Postcode Gardeners in communities in these areas, to green up their spaces in the way they want. Together they'll bring back nature to 1,000 spaces across the country.
Meet our first Postcode Gardeners who are digging into these locations:
- Hackney, London E5
- Bideford, Devon EX39
- Notting Dale, London W10 and W11
- Balsall Heath, Birmingham B13
Over the next 3 years, we'll be setting up more and more Postcode Gardeners, in the communities that need nature the most.
Things for a gardener to do in autumn
Postcode Gardener Lizz and her gardening group in Bideford, have a busy autumn ahead. Here’s her tips for autumn jobs for any gardener, from doorstep planters to an allotment:
- Plant bulbs. Daffodils, tulips, alliums and other bulbs can be planted during autumn for flowers in early spring.
- Save seeds. Lots of summer flowers are now full of seeds. Leaving some for the birds, dry seeds from cosmos, sunflowers, kale and leeks indoors, then store in paper envelopes in a cool place until next spring.
- Sow next season's crops. Hardy peas, broad beans and garlic cloves can be sown in autumn for an earlier harvest next year.
- Plan for next year. In our community gardening, autumn is a big planning time for us. What’s worked well this year, what have people enjoyed growing and harvesting? We make sowing plans for the next year and make notes on planting that we can change in the spring.
