Leytonstone resident Marc is helping nature thrive on his doorstep by teaming up with his neighbours to transform their road into a ‘bee friendly street’.
Together, we can all play a role in helping nature thrive and protecting the environment, through local green initiatives such as tree planting, restoring habitats and creating welcoming places for people and wildlife.
Marc shares the neighbourhood benefits of having bee friendly streets:
“I'm just one member of a street-wide group that keeps our street clean, looks after it and tries to encourage as many pollinators as we can manage.
“On the chosen day, we'll set up a time and people will just come out when suits them, either with their own tools or borrowing from neighbours. We just give the street a thorough deep clean, digging out weeds, leaving the odd pretty one like a poppy. After two or three hours work the street looks absolutely transformed!”
The creation of bee friendly streets is just one example of the opportunities to get involved locally with climate action.
Marc explains how small green steps can lead to bigger change:
“Everyone knows we're in a climate emergency and our pollinators are declining. Shockingly, this could be up to 70 or 80 per cent nationally. It seems one of the best ways we can help is with the urban environment and with initiatives like bee friendly streets.
“We have all definitely noticed an increase in the number of pollinators and the range of them on our street. Small actions don't seem that significant in themselves at the time but if enough people do it, it really does make a difference.”
Waltham Forest is blessed with beautiful green spaces, from forests to wetlands. These green spaces, along with our local parks and neighbourhoods, play a vital role in our wellbeing, community life, and connection to nature.
Across Waltham Forest, residents, community groups, expert partners and the council are joining forces to protect and enhance the environment from volunteering in our parks, taking part in Green Gym sessions, to planting trees, restoring habitats, and creating welcoming places for both people and wildlife.
To support this shared effort, we are distributing 5,000 free trees and 250,000 bulbs to residents and volunteer groups, creating new and improved spaces for nature and local people to enjoy, building new parklets and building rain gardens, and turning unused land into growing sites. We also provide young people with the tools needed to ensure future generations recognise the importance of our natural world at our environmental education centre, The Hive.
We also provide young people the tools needed to teach future generations about the importance of our natural world at the environmental education centre The Hive.
As a Borough, we are facing big challenges, from rising costs and funding pressures to inequality. By working together, we are making a difference to the things we know matter to residents.
There are so many ways to get involved locally, if you are looking to give back or need support yourself.
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We know there are so many people contributing to the borough, and we’d love you to share your story of local people or groups doing amazing work in your neighbourhood so we can celebrate them.