Urban Rewilding at Derby's Allestree Park
Britain's largest urban rewilding project has just received £1.1m in National Lottery funding. How is the project going? How does it compare to other LettsSafari parks? And how can you get involved?
Set within 320 acres on the northern edge of Derby City, Allestree Park aims to become a symbol of rewilding in the UK. The community rewilding project hopes to become the largest public urban rewilding park in Britain, and offers an interesting opportunity for us to discuss the nature of publicly funded rewilding projects, but more importantly the essential steps required for rewilding success. It can also help us learn from and better understand the difference between LettsSafari and certain other projects.
You see, Allestree Park is not simply a rewilding project, it is a public space that is being transformed. As a result, it requires a greater amount of buy-in from a greater number of people. Locals and regular park visitors need to be included and encouraged to participate in the rewilding efforts. This is always an important consideration when transforming existing public spaces and as you can imagine it can be a bit like herding wild herbivores! The park is billed as a community project, with a three year plan to become a wilded space, with dedicated dates and events to involve local people with the work and changes that will occur.
The new investment of £1.1m kicks off a series of necessary rewilding actions. Much of the funding will go into constructing core infrastructure and better involve the public in the rewilding work. The 1.1. million will fund the construction of a dug-out pond, a natural outdoor shelter and a citizen zoo.
At LettsSafari we often discuss the essential steps required in a rewilding project. Allestree has already practiced a number of them, including halting unnecessary mowing in their park and allowing the meadows to grow naturally with wildflowers. Additionally, they will start work on improving waterways, notably with the dug pond’s construction. Here they are involving the public in an innovative way, They’ve scheduled a public open day where they ask each participant to help find and map pre-existing natural waterways that will then be used to fill the pond.
LettsSafari works hard to restore the natural streams and ponds across its growing network of parks trying to enhance the habitats as they develop with improved waterways.
In Exeter’s Capability Brown gardens we have cultivated a natural lake environment. The gardens have a wild and unique 1 acre lake, sitting on an extraordinary man-made platform built by Capability Brown, perched irregularly on the steeps of Haldon Hill. The lake has been enhanced to accommodate woods surrounding it and trees overhanging with rich plant life along the banks and a protected population of aquatic life which keep the weeds of the lake in balance through the year. The wildlife that enjoy the lake are quite vibrant now - and The Lakehouse that hovers above it is a dream to stay in. Increasingly nature lovers flock to it from far and wide.
There are also two core streams leading to a number of interconnected waterways which flow through the Capability Brown Gardens. These life flows of the garden space feed the deep flower and plant beds of the upper garden, ensuring we can have diverse and colourful banks of growth throughout the year.
Without those streams and marshes, we would be without the water trees and plants, such as willow, eucalyptus, bamboo, and various water plants and grasses surrounded by gunnera, all together in an extended set of connected planted beds. We cultivate these waterways by building out the banks, and enhancing the flows, but also allow for water runs through the rest of the garden, to create bog and wetlands habitats at the bottom of the Capability Brown Gardens, helping us develop mineral rich soil, and maintain strong insect, bug and bird populations.
The citizen zoo at Allestree is also an important use of their community. The zoo is intended to bring back and reinvigorate species that have declined in the park. The species include less considered animals like dung beetles and more obvious species of buttrflies and birds. They plan to set up public viewing points and dedicated landscape zones where the community can see the work as its carried out, and use their mobile phones to document the project’s journey and hopefully its successes.
These important steps involve the local people in the project, while also separate human interaction from the rewilding work while the habitats are delicate and new. Rewilders often encounter opposition and barriers from the public who may feel excluded because of the inherent need to provide nature the space to develop on its own. The plans for local participation at Allestree hope to alleviate that conflict and turn that energy to helpful engagement rather then opposition.
Allestree Park’s approach is one that offers the chance to observe from a distance, which is important for rewilding. If you want to get a more detailed view of the rewilding process and its outcomes, you can visit LettsSafari and join us for a Safari visit, with a guided tour through two of our major rewilding projects, including Dawlish Park and the Capability Brown Gardens.
Allestree will replant native trees, aiming to create a mini-wood the size of a tennis court within the park. The space will be packed with trees through communal work. People are encouraged to come and plant young seedlings. The native trees chosen for replantng will be deciduous trees including a great number of fruiting trees. The tree planting choices are designed to attract a nice range of pollinating insects, butterflies and new bird life.
Similarly, in LettsSafari, we have worked hard to improve the number of copses and wooded spaces through Dawlish Park and the Capability Brown Gardens. Each year from mid Autumn through winter we plant out young native trees grown naturally in the Capability Brown Gardens, then re-planted in our network of rewilded parks. In so doing, you need to remain flexible and responsive, as this process will generally deliver a 60% - 70% success rate. And yet, the benefit of naturally cultivating such an array of sometimes rare and special future trees has become an important feature of the rewilding work at LettsSafari.
In the long term Allestree is looking to have its entire space designated as a specific nature reserve, and building dedicated nature trails to inspire others to create rewilding schemes in other parts of Derby City and beyond much like LettsSafari’s guided Safari tours inspire and offer guidance to other rewilders in Devon, Cornwall and farther afield.
Allestree reflects an important development in British rewilding, but more is needed. Projects like Allestree offer great learning opportunities, particularly by involving the local community. But they also reflect the importance of our work at LettsSafari - developing a network of parks and gardens and providing the tools, techniques and inspiration for hundreds of other mini LettsSafari parks and gardens to blossom across the UK. When you join our community you help us build more rewilding parks like Allestree, so we can reestablish a wilder, healthier landscape.
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