Community Fun Day
On the 30th May 2024, Trustgreen hosted a community event in Banbury, Oxfordshire.
The theme of the event was protecting pollinators. This was achieved by installing three bee hotels onsite, making wildflower seed bombs and completing a nature trail around the site to spot a variety of pollinators and important habitats.
The Importance of Bees
There are more that 250 species of bees native to the UK. Bees play an important role in pollination – which is an ecosystem service that allows plants to reproduce. Without pollination, many plants will die and there will be no new plants to replace them.
Bees are under threat due to habitat loss, heavy use of pesticides, parasites and disease, climate change, and the increase of invasive species. Of the 250 native species of bee, 24 are bumblebees and the rest are solitary bees. While bumblebees nest in colonies, solitary bees live and nest alone. Suitable nesting sites for solitary bees include holes in the ground, old beetle holes, or hollow stems. Three bee hotels were installed on the development, providing the hollow stems within that solitary bees need to lay their eggs.
Community Event Activities
At the community event there were a variety of activities during the event. Residents were able to join in making wildflower seed bombs with instructions of how to plant them, what wildflowers you will see sprouting and the benefits to the local wildlife.
They could also plant a sunflower seed to enter Trustgreen’s tallest sunflower competition which has been running over multiple community events across the country and the winner will be announced at the end of august. We also created a nature trail around the estate for the residents to join in with activites allowing them to discover the importance of local habitats such as hedgerows and sustainable urban drainage (SUDs) ponds and to see the new additions of the bug hotels recently installed on the development.
In addition to these fun activites we had lots of fact sheets and information surrounding wildflowers and how local wildlife and pollinators such as bees and butterflies will benefit from planting wildflowers, different local butterfly species that you can spot around different ares in your garden and our team were there to answer any questions and take on feedback from residents regarding the manged areas.
The Wild Banbury Project
A member of the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) joined us on the day to host an activity creating paper plant pots from recycled paper and to share information and promote their local Wild Banbury Prohect. The project is a focus for nature, inviting and inspiring everyone in the town to value wildlife by holding educational events and activities to inspire people to take action for wildlife, providing information and resources to help those in the area bring nature into their lives, supporting and helping to grow the network of groups that work to enhance local greenspaces for the benefit of wildlife and people, helping people to come together to improve community spaces for wildlife and working with the local authorities to find ways of creating more space for nature within the town.
