Scarcroft Green Nursery is turning an overgrown allotment into a space for the children to enjoy, learn, and grow fruit and vegetables. The GGS fund will help get the garden fit for purpose, after which families will volunteer their time to maintain this vibrant, publicly accessible resource.
The Foss Fairy Trail blossomed during lockdown when a local resident noticed fairy doors on trees on her regular river walks beside the Foss and decided to create fairy houses made from salvaged material. With the Groves Association and Flower Power York, they plan to enhance biodiversity and access by creating woodland areas and footpaths.
Wild York is a new collective identity for York’s greening initiatives that aims to enhance green space and biodiversity on a city-wide scale by connecting the existing network more closely, thereby enabling resource sharing and capacity building. They are creating a website with an interactive map guide to green space volunteering in York.
The Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust is expanding its no-dig edible raised beds at the New Earswick Folk Hall café, the hub for the JRHT-maintained social housing. So far, the garden has attracted interest from a diverse range of local residents and was particularly effective in promoting good mental health and wellbeing.
Bishophillbillies volunteers tend Bishophill Community Garden. Their GGS grant is going towards a neighbourhood greening project that will fill the streets of Bishophill with plants, flowers, protected pollinator zones, sensory gardens and street planters.
The Friends of Glen Gardens volunteer at a Green Flag Award-winning park in Heworth. They used their grant to create Keith’s Wood – a woodland garden with native flowers, shrubs and trees and a wheelchair-friendly path winding through it.
Woodthorpe Community Group is a long-standing organisation for residents who have revitalised the local play area and planted bulbs around the neighbourhood. A small grant from GGS funded a community bulb-planting event that added splashes of colour to Woodthorpe’s verges.
Led by Flower Power, the Greening the Groves project supports Groves residents to grow flowers and herbs by holding weekly gardening sessions. A facilitator helps residents develop knowledge and skills to green unused public spaces and back alleys.
The Friends of Clifton Backies (FoCB) have been maintaining and enhancing the wildlife reserve for over 20 years. They are using GGS funds to create a storage space near the site so that they can extend their volunteering activities and engage more volunteers.
York Travellers Trust is a community-led organisation for the Gypsy and Traveller communities in and around York. Their growing project is enhancing green spaces in and around the Clifton site and encouraging residents to take advantage of the physical and mental health benefits of gardening.
Volunteers have transformed an unloved patch of land beside Southlands Methodist Church into a community garden for local residents to meet, relax, play, learn about sustainable living and grow edible produce for Planet Food’s pay-as-you-feel café.
Edible York is a charity that has helped to bloom a network of edible community gardens and leads Abundance, an urban harvesting project which gets volunteers picking and redistributing surplus fruit. Their grant allowed them to focus on the enhancement and maintenance of several fruit tree sites across the city, recruiting and upskilling new volunteers.
The Lanes Community Garden committee are transforming a derelict plot in Clifton into a lush urban garden with raised beds, fruit trees and bushes, herbs, and flowers. Funding from Growing Green Spaces will help them to fully reinvigorate the site and recruit local volunteers.
St Nicks led meadowkeeping sessions to enhance the grassland habitat at Millennium Fields, connecting the cluster of volunteer groups working in the area and teaching new volunteers how to scythe, coppice, create wildflower meadows, and plant trees.
Dodsworth Residents’ Association (DARA) are giving a neglected piece of land at the end of a junction between Pottery Lane and Dodsworth Avenue a green makeover by planting fruit trees and bushes. They will establish a regular volunteering group who will enhance the space further.
The Friends of Rowntree Park is a charity and tireless team of volunteers that help keep one of York’s best-loved green spaces looking beautiful. Hiring a paid volunteer co-ordinator has helped to organise and grow their gardening, wellbeing, environmental and cultural initiatives.
Redfearn Community Group is dedicated to greening the alleys and streets around Willis Street, Gordon Street, Wolsley Street, Wellington Street. A GGS grant furthered their mission to add beauty and biodiversity to the neighbourhood with planting parties, meet-ups, plant swaps and ‘backyard crawls’!
The Friends of Fishponds Wood and Beech Grove are committed to increasing and maintaining the biodiversity of this precious woodland and the green areas in the nearby Beech Grove. They purchased a toolshed so that they can expand their action days.
Previous GGS funding enabled TCV and York LGBT Forum to create an inspiring Human Rights Garden in the park. Continuation funding was provided for TCV to advise the LGBT Forum on how to make the transition to becoming an independent volunteering group.
The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) lead a dedicated Thursday volunteering group who tend the flowerbeds and carry out conservation work. Facilitated gardening sessions allowed them to support and engage vulnerable volunteers and start a new food growing group for local residents.
The York Unifying Multicultural Initiative's (YUMI) International Community Garden is a tranquil place where people from different cultures come together to grow and cook. Their grant allowed them to expand their facilitated gardening sessions and develop referral pathways for refugees.
Holgate Community Garden expanded the work they do to keep the garden flourishing with flowers, fruit trees, and wildflower areas by running family-friendly gardening sessions, training new volunteers to scythe, and having pupils at the nearby school plant 170 bulbs.