The Love Your Park Community Fund has just announced the first 13 community projects that have been successful in their grant applications to improve their local green space. 

Organised by Your Park Bristol & Bath, and supported by Voscur’s fundraising specialist Jenny Wildblood, the new fund was set up to help communities recover from the pandemic while celebrating their green spaces. The grant funding will directly benefit 3000 people in the immediate vicinity of the projects as well as providing benefits for the wider community. 

Did you know that one in eight households in the UK has no access to a private or shared garden? Isolation during recent lockdowns highlighted the value of gardens, parks and other green spaces for good physical and mental health. Applicants for the Love Your Park Community Fund had to demonstrate how they will help people who do don't have a garden of their own, or don't regularly benefit from a green space, to tap into this value in other ways. 

Jenny was part of the awards panel that considered dozens of applications from across Bristol and Bath. She helped to evaluate the successful submissions which will not only benefit local people, but also support the natural environment by protecting local habitats and creating wilder spaces in parks, greens and gardens. 

Why not pay your local park or green space a visit and perhaps get involved in the great work so many community groups are carrying out? 

Here are some examples of the projects awarded in this first Love Your Park Community Fund:   

Grow Green Carolina, an informal community group of 30 residents of Carolina House, Kingsdown. The group will use their grant to cultivate a ribbon of long grass, planting wild flowers, apple trees and bulbs in Dove Street Open Space. 

Volunteers from Chaplin Community Garden Association in Easton are transforming an unloved ‘pocket’ park into a safe space for local-community use.  

Manor Woods Valley Group are using their funding to develop Forest School learning experiences in their green spaces. 

Dame Emily Park Project, Bedminster will also be introducing Forest School sessions, for pre-school and primary age children. 

Friends of Hartcliffe Millennium Green will continue their work to encourage the community to see the park in different ways, re-energising the park as a community space, providing opportunities for growing, learning activities and hands-on experiences of work. 

For more information and to see the full list of the 13 projects awarded a grant visit the Your Park Bristol & Bath website.