People gain a range of benefits from opportunities to experience and connect with nature close to them. Adopting new nature-friendly practices on land around social housing can also reduce costs and carbon footprints, provide opportunities for community engagement and help improve the biodiversity of our towns and cities.

This event will provide an opportunity to learn how to introduce a more nature-positive approach to managing greenspace around social housing, including:

Managing existing grasslands to maximise biodiversity, including different methods for cutting amenity grassland;

Introducing wildflowers to grassland to improve diversity;

Discussions of soil type and fertility;

The best trees and shrubs for hedging to maximise biodiversity, including insect pollinators, birds and mammals.

The day will include a site visit to recent examples of nature-positive amenity grassland management on social housing greenspace in Glasgow and a chance to see and discuss with site managers how they’ve achieved it.

In terms of changing how social housing greenspace is managed, it is crucial to ensure that tenants are involved in decision-making and co-design. There will therefore be a session that explores best practice in terms of:

· selling the benefits of nature-positive greenspace management

· early-stage tenant/ wider community engagement to ensure the spaces and design meet the needs of people as well as nature

The event will not cover the management of wetland sites where the ground is permanently or seasonally inundated with water.

Who should attend?

Practitioners, including ‘in house’ teams and contractors, who have practical experience of managing greenspace in a social housing setting or similar situation. This event is aimed at people who are in a position to influence management 'on the ground', rather than those with a general interest in nature.

Who is delivering the event?

This event is being delivered by Butterfly Conservation and NatureScot.

Anthony McCluskey from Butterfly Conservation has worked in Environmental Conservation for most of his career, both in the Bumblebee Conservation Trust as Outreach Officer and at Butterfly Conservation through a number of urban-based projects.

NatureScot is Scotland’s Nature Agency. We work to improve our natural environment in Scotland and inspire everyone to care more about it.

Nature-positive greenspace for social housing