February 2024

Happy March from the Green Meadows Team!

It’s an exciting time with many signs of spring fast approaching. Green Meadows is being transformed with the growing group back in full swing and the butterfly group evolving with a fresh revamp to match the season.

Read on to learn about all the exciting things that happened in February.

Improving The Energy Efficiency of Victorian Homes in The Meadows!

As we mentioned last month, Green Meadows has been working on a new project. We are happy to announce this project is now live!

The Insulation Guide is a new resource that includes all the different property types in the Old Meadows Conservation area and creates personalised professional drawings specific for insulating your Victorian home.

The Meadows contains some lovely examples of Victorian terrace homes. These homes are often damp, draughty, and expensive to heat. We want to make sure that these homes are protected for future generations to enjoy and are also insulated to make sure that they are warmer and healthier homes for everyone who lives in them.

We have created personalised guides which tell you how to add insulation to your Victorian home. The guides include information on how to deal with common tricky details (e.g. where your roof insulation meets the wall insulation). You can take these to a builder or do the work yourself if you feel confident enough!

To download your guide to insulating your Home visit click here https://insulation.greenmeadows.uk/

Rewilding The Meadows

After some months of hibernation, the Butterfly Garden group met up again. This time with a new member, Debbie. Debbie got in touch with Green Meadows as she adores hedgehogs and wants to work with her local community to start a hedgehog highway. This has made the group rename themselves the ‘Rewilding Project’ with the aim to make greenspaces better for all wildlife.

So, what is a hedgehog highway? All of our gardens have fences or walls making it difficult for hogs to make their way around. Hedgehog highways encourage there to be a through way between gardens, providing places for rest, shelter, food, and water on the way.

Debbie has been in touch with Wild Things Keyworth who has an award-winning hedgehog highway and they made her this great doorway (shown in the picture below) to start off the highway in her garden.

Get in touch if you would like to find out more and receive a FREE Meadows Hedgehog Highway doorway to start making your garden hog-friendly!

Email us at admin@greenmeadows.uk or call us at 0115 718 2028

Community Compost Bins Emptied for The First Time

On the 2nd of March, we met for the day to empty the compost bins for the first time. Thank you to everyone who came along, it was great to hear what you were going to do with the compost. From sowing seeds to topping up houseplants for extra nutrients.

The community engagement for this project has been incredible. There are currently 70 households that are dedicated to composting in the community through 2 main composting sites throughout the Meadows. The composting sites have been so popular we now have a waiting list and are looking for additional locations to set up a new site. If you would like to have a community composting site near you, just let us know!

The Meadows Growing Group will be using the leftover compost for an upcoming project in partnership with Nottingham City Homes. Keep your eyes peeled for some updates on a new public growing space popping up in the Meadows.

For more information, or to get involved please visit Climate Champions — Green Meadows

Building Eco Resilience Through Our Workshops

One of the best ways we can fight climate change is by teaching each other how to be more resilient. Eco resilience is a way to encourage people to learn how to mend things they already own, instead of buying new.

The way we are doing this is through our Eat and Learn workshops, where each month the community gets the chance to learn a new resilience skill and receive a hot meal - all completely free.

This month we held two events. First, we held a workshop showing people how to DIY a slow cooker in partnership with Tiger Community Enterprise CIC and Dr Mike Clifford from the University of Nottingham. The slow cookers were trailed, making lunch on the day, and taken home to be used again.

Separately we also hosted a low-carbon tour of homes in the Meadows that have been retrofitted using skills you can learn from our DIY workshops. They have been completely managed by the owners and the people who attended got the chance to ask questions and learn first-hand what it is like to DIY retrofit your home. These events happen throughout the year, and we would love to see you on our next one!

To see upcoming events please click here Events — Green Meadows