Nextdoor Nature

One Nextdoor Nature project being carried out in Dorset's urban setting is the resurrection of the Poole Town Community Garden. Read our blog post to find out how Poole Town Community Garden was resurrected from an urban desert, into a haven for wildlife and the local community. 

Another community project that Nextdoor Nature have been involved with is Sterte Court Community Garden. We worked closely with the community of Sterte Close in Poole, alongside BCP Homes, on this already existing community garden. By chatting to community members, and listening to their wants and needs, we were able to provide support  to ensure their vision was fully realised. From mind mapping to bird box building, it has been an absolute pleasure to work with such an enthusiastic and nature-conscious community. 

Trinidad Village and House are sheltered housing schemes within the Bourne Valley area of Poole. Residents have various levels of need, some with profound mobility and cognitive impairment. Youth and elders live together in small bungalows or flats scattered around plainly landscaped grounds, or within the main, curiously named Village, an Extra Care block of individual flats for the most profoundly in need. There is a communal lounge, an onsite, independently managed café, and various smaller communal rooms within the block. It is quiet in Trinidad Village; the corridors are empty and a stillness pervades the site. Staff here work hard to entice residents into the communal spaces and outside, with planned activities. But it is difficult, noticeably more now than before the pandemic.

Nextdoor Nature was approached by BCP Homes after the success at Poole Town Centre Garden, to help encourage residents into their gardens. We started gently, presenting residents with films about wildlife gardening, encouraging conversations about hedgehogs, birds, slow worms, and butterflies. We brought wildflower seeds and painted ceramic pots, walked around the grounds, and in the background held meetings with estate managers to rewild the grounds and engaged with wellbeing and arts officers. A gardening group, already formed, was reinvigorated with funding by the National Lottery Heritage Fund for plants, compost, empathy, and careful guidance. These are small steps and we are yet to see larger numbers of residents venturing outside and into a garden that has enormous potential for encouraging wildlife as well as therapeutic activity for the people who live nearby.

A few neighbours near Poole Quay came together and created a thriving garden on a roadside verge. Their idea was to create a friendly communal space to grow fruit and vegetables, to make a space for nature, and for people to connect to each other. The garden has been supported by Nextdoor Nature, but cared for and loved by the community. Passers by, on their way to the Town Centre, stop and admire the wildflowers. They are encouraged to pick fruit and vegetables or to sit and gaze at butterflies and listen to bees and other insects which have also found this wilder space in an urban setting.

The Turlin Moor Community Map project started last September with Nextdoor Nature seeing an opportunity to work alongside an established textile craft group involving prominent elders and younger women within the community. An idea from Common Ground’s parish map projects carried out in the 1980’s was taken to the group. Parish maps were visual expressions of a community’s feelings about the place they live in. These textile maps gave understanding to the observer of what the community thought important, showing their local distinctiveness.

The project has become a catalyst for talking about nature, what is important to people who live on the Moor and whether it should be represented on the map. The remit given was to be brave, there are no restrictions and to show everything of meaning to you.

Turlin Moor has been marginalized for decades with stories of vandalism, drug use, knife and gun crime and theft. One road in and one road out. But who would have thought that someone in the group living on the Moor for over 40 years remembers a deer charging down the main road, others talk of seeing clouds of butterflies on the open fields. They mention the Baccies, the name given by fishermen to the backwaters on Lytchett Bay, part of our reserve. They like that the sea is close and there is space to walk on its shores.

This project is evolving slowly, conversations weave amongst the fabric, felt and glue stitched together by a group of women sharing a common ground.

Turlin Moor sits on the edge of Lytchett Bay, an internationally important area of marsh and wetland habitat which attracts rare overwintering birds, sand lizards, Dartford and reed warbler and the evocative sounding nightjar. Our own Lytchett Bay nature reserve includes part of the shoreline serving the fishing and boating community of Turlin Moor. This provided the perfect backdrop for a film made by Bournemouth and Poole College students alongside Nextdoor Nature, demonstrating how valuable and successful collaborative partnership working is. The film project involved a team of over 40 people, representing the Turlin Moor community, The College, Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole Homes, and Birds and Recreation Initiative, and demonstrated how a single idea from the Nextdoor Nature project can bring together local elders and teenagers from the community and sow the seed for a greater awareness of their own environment and the importance of its protection.

Watch the Creature from Gilman Lake film

Watch behind the scenes of the Creature from Gilman Lake