In response to the ecological crisis facing our wildlife today the Wilder Gardens project focuses on the contribution to habitat connectivity that gardens can make within urban settings.

Wilder Gardens is part of Greenhavens Network urban wilding program where we are asking you to join in and have fun making a difference to our wildlife by making small changes in our gardens, drives, on our windowsills and even on the verges outside your house.

Easy interventions like not mowing your lawn #NoMowMay for example, can allow your garden to become an essential stepping-stone for pollinators making their way to more extensive habitat.

A wilder garden doesn’t need to look messy. Longer grass benefits dandelions and other lawn flowers providing essential nectar for our pollinators. Lots of caterpillars and other insects also live within longer lawns and come out at night to eat the grasses.

When we work together we can create a street of gardens that become a corridor or highway for animals to safely get around, feed, roost, sleep and hibernate.

On our website, you will find information on how to make your garden more wildlife friendly including how to grow a wildflower meadow, different homes you can build for wildlife in your gardens, how to integrate water into your garden and much more. See for yourself and get inspired to wild your garden!

We are also recruiting Wilder Garden Champions to bring the cause to their neighbourhoods. Through the Wilder Gardens project you can access workshops and training to identify wildflowers, bees, butterflies and bats. We can advise and support you along the way so that you can confidently encourage your neighbours to join in too.

We now have over 40 Wilder Garden Champions who are creating neighbourhood clusters in Lewes, Newhaven, Peacehaven and Seaford. We have been busily training them to support their communities in creating havens for wildlife in the neighbourhoods and gardens.

As well as advising householders how to make your garden more hospitable to wildlife we will be providing training on how to survey and record species in gardens and streets and contribute to national monitoring programmes.

We are also busy creating a Wilder Garden documentary, if you are interested in having your garden featured then drop us a line. We are looking for Before and Afters, small or big, we want to know how your wilder garden makes you feel, how you manage it, what motivates you. Check out some of the wilding stories of our community members here:

Our wildlife needs help to survive increased development and climate change. Let’s be the change we want to see, the time to act is now and together we can step up for wildlife.