Local community project will use wildlife gardening to inspire national audience

[lead]Wild at Heart – a community project run by Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust – will soon be inspiring even more people to try wildlife gardening at this year’s BBC Gardeners’ World Live Beautiful Borders competition.[/lead]

The Wild at Heart Beautiful Borders entry, which has been accepted to this year’s competition, is all about inspiring people to try out simple wildlife gardening ideas in their own gardens or community spaces, connecting up communities and providing the resources wildlife needs to thrive. Wild at Heart participants will be involved in creating the border, having already started sowing some of the seeds, and will be growing some of the plants and making items for the garden as well as being at the show to talk to people about the border and their project.

Wild at Heart is an innovative project supported by the National Lottery Community Fund. It works specifically with adults aged 50 years and over to improve their wellbeing through seasonal nature-based activities. Over the last five years, more than 4,000 people in Sheffield and Rotherham, with an average age of 70, have taken part in Wild at Heart through more than 700 nature-based activity sessions. More than two thirds of these took part for over six months and over 1,700 reported being more active as a result.

Working with small local business Baldwin’s Gardening Solutions, the Wild at Heart group will create a wildlife gardening-inspired border similar to the Trust’s own community wildlife garden on Stafford Road, near Norfolk Heritage Park in Sheffield. The border will have distinct planting areas and take people on a wildlife gardening journey with opportunities for people to engage with the space and feel inspired to implement these ideas at home or in their community.

Richard, the proprietor of Baldwin’s Gardening Solutions, is on a journey of discovery himself, having struggled with stress for a number of years, especially since reaching the