Grow Wild reaching deprived areas

Wild flower campaign Grow Wild –  recently voted the UK’s best environmental project in national lottery awards – has had particular impact in deprived areas. According to interviews and focus groups conducted by Forest Research people in the most deprived areas benefitted most from community projects and seed kits provided through the programme, with recipients in more deprived areas “significantly more likely to say they learned about wild flowers and about their communities.”

Grow Wild sponsors youth and community projects and provides free seed packets to individuals to plant wild flowers – as of September 2016 anyone can sign up to receive these on their website. The goal is to brighten up public spaces, restore the UK’s declining wild flowers, boost populations of pollinators such as butterflies and bees, and bring neighbourhoods together. A case study looks at how spaces in Liverpool and Manchester have been transformed with striking wildflower meadows.

 

 

Grow Wild’s impact in deprived areas is highlighted by Forest Research which found that since 2014, 48% of Grow Wild’s sponsored community projects were in the UK’s 30% most deprived areas and in 2016 16% of projects funded have been in the top 10% most deprived.