2023 Natural Environment Awards

The highly commended project for the Education Award was favoured by the judges for the various initiatives taken to boost local biodiversity and increase pupils’ interactions with the natural environment.

This school created their own Forest School where they hold sessions for children from nursery to year 6.

They have planted around 200 trees, including a willow fence and other willow structures. They have large composters and conduct a bio blitz at the site and have new minibeasts turning up each year, such as cardinal and longhorn beetles along with Burnett Moths.

The Forest School is a space where children can be free to find their own inspirations and intrinsically motivate the sessions.

It is a place where children are released from the constraints of the classroom and learn to empathise with others and the world around them.

The Highly Commended project for this category was highlighted by the judges as being a wide-reaching project that has benefit to both nature and people with a good plan for maintaining the spaces.

Solihull Habitat and Nature Improvement Project undertook a wide range of habitat and nature improvement projects across the borough.

The projects have provided wildflower meadows and verges, tree and hedgerow planting, created new ponds, extended existing and created new woodlands, restored woodland structure and diversity, restored river sections, and removed invasive non-native species.

The work undertaken across all the projects involved in the Nature Improvement Project are feeding into the development of the national Nature Recovery Strategy and used to inform Biodiversity Net Gain commitments.