Biodiversity & the Wild West End Project: Encouraging Birds, Bees & Bats into the Heart of London

Winter Lecture Series 2020/21 organised jointly by The Gardens Trust and The London Gardens Trust
Monday, 11 January 2021, 6-7pm
Biodiversity & the Wild West End Project
Tom Gray, Senior Ecological Consultant, Arup.
This talk will focus on the history and aims of Wild West End, highlighting the partnership’s successes, and the challenges to delivering green spaces in urban and historic areas.
Wild West End is a unique partnership between several of central London’s largest landholders, which aims to create a series of ecologically-valuable stepping stones between four of London’s historic Royal Parks, encouraging wildlife back into the city and giving people greater access to nature, benefitting personal health and wellbeing. The partnership also aims to improve the physical and environmental quality of the city by establishing connected, multi-functional green spaces within new developments, retrofitted on existing buildings or within the public realm.
These green stepping stones between existing areas of surrounding parkland are being created by a combination of green walls, street trees, green lamp posts, planters and pop-up spaces. Wild West End also aims to attract pollinators, bats, and birds into London’s urban centre; species such as the black redstart and house sparrow. This is being achieved through a combination of diverse living landscapes providing sources of food and water, and installation of permanent bat, bird, and invertebrate houses.

All lectures and booking online. Tickets: £4 for Gardens Trust/London Gardens Trust/all County Gardens Trusts members, £6 for non-members; season tickets for 12 lectures: £40/£60
The lecture will be live online on the day but will be available as a recording afterwards. All ticket holders will be sent a link to the recording the day after the lecture. The recording will be available for one week.