Collection of monitoring data at specific time intervals during the project to aid evaluation

Appletree is an outdoor community resource, where people of all ages and from all walks of life, get together to grow e.g. fruit, and contribute to developing and maintaining the area. The growing space and garden are divided into different areas, offering a range of gardening experience. The community also contributes to their permaculture, wildlife and wildflower areas. The community is constantly planting and regenerating areas of the garden. (Ref. 1)

With the relocation of the railways between the Hauptbahnhof and Pasing a large area became available for an infill development strategy. The redevelopment of central railway areas of Munich is in line with the city's guidelines for sustainable development (Perspective München) referred to as compact - urban - green. The initiative is aimed at implementing 7500 new flats and creating 15000 new workplaces in total, which are supported by green recreational areas. (Reference 1) The project consists of six separately planned parts, some are already partially finished. (Reference 2) This NBS discusses Birketweg, one of these parts, which is 60 hectares large.

Wigan Flashes Project is encouraging natural re-colonisation to a site of very high conservation value and an enormous asset for recreation for the local community. The Wigan Flashes are a group of eight shallow wetlands, formed originally as a result of mining subsidence, which extend south from near Wigan's town centre. Over time, the industrial landscape has evolved in to a mixture of open water, reedbed, mossland, willow carr and fenland (ref 1).

The project tackles the habitat fragility of the Ligurian wetlands and the impact of a turtle species called Emys orbicularis in the Centa Piana river, the Vara and Magra rivers areas. The project focused on the restoration of the natural habitat, the eradication of invasive American species threatening the European turtle species and the assistance of local turtles reproduction and re-introduction in the wild. A large part of the project was conducted thanks to the participation of volunteers and large emphasis was given to education about environmental habitats protection. (1)

Revival is a partnership which is committed to delivering improvements for wildlife and people on the Lower Don catchment from the Don Gorge to Goole. It enables organisations over a whole host of different sectors to come together and work under one shared vision: create a committed partnership delivering improvements for wildlife and people on the Lower Don catchment. This intervention is thus a change in the governance of natural areas in and around Doncaster that leads to projects, rather than being a specific project itself. The River Don Revival project will continue to fight for the river’s future. Firstly, an action plan will layout the manual work necessary to improve the river and the catchment as a whole. In addition, the partnership intends to work with a scheme called the NW Water Rangers to encourage the public to engage in citizen science, collecting evidence of poor water quality. The partnership will also work closely with the South Follingsby Park development to implements Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems, to create new habitats and to improve the river itself. Finally, the partnership hopes to appoint a dedicated member of staff to oversee all of the work taking place on the Don. (Ref 1, 2, 7).

Hailes Quarry Park (HQP) is a large open space in the south-west of Edinburgh. It covers an area of 12.15ha. HQP was a very boggy area in the centre of the park which was effectively out of use. A project was planned which aimed to make environmental improvements and engage the local community and encourage healthy living. One of the main features of the park’s recent development is the creation of a wetland area with a range of wetland plant species. This new habitat will be home to birds, amphibians and native wetland plants, and will be a part of the green corridor. Additionally, a Biodiversity enhancement project was carried out at the site (ref 1, 7).

In 2016 the Municipality of Lisbon started the renovation of the Botanical Garden of Lisbon, declared in 2010 as a national heritage monument. The botanical garden is both a vital urban open space and a significant cultural landscape of the city. This Botanical Garden is home to an important collection of plants with economic value, reflecting the strong links to the Portuguese expansion and the routes of the navigators that spread them across the various continents. The intervention is expected to provide improvements in the irrigation and water circulation systems, in the rainwater harvesting system, in the reorganization and improvement of garden green spaces, and in the restoration of paths. With the objective of requalifying the space, bringing significant improvements in terms of sustainability of resources, visitors safety, new cultural and recreational opportunity spaces (Ref. 3, 4, 8).

This area of Keighley is drained by a combined sewer system operated by Yorkshire Water. The natural drainage system is poorly defined.
During extreme rainfall, water from the park and adjacent housing flows down the hill and into the surrounding area and causes flooding. Storage in the form of SuDS was provided in Devonshire Park using a series of “trench trough” structures. These take the form of depressions (swales) with gently sloping sides (ref. 1). Extensive flooding in 2008 and 2012, the local resilience group has been working tirelessly to reduce flooding in Devonshire Park areas (ref 4). Up to £170m of this has been brought forward to accelerate work on ‘shovel-ready’ flood defence schemes to begin construction in 2020 or 2021. The Keighley and Ilkley constituency are one of the beneficiaries, with improvements set to be made to Natural Flood Management aspect of the Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme, providing an immediate boost to jobs supporting the local economy (ref 4).

The Leeds Parks and Green Space Strategy is a park protection, improvement, and creation program in Leeds under their Cultural Strategy. Main priorities are set out to achieve a vision where good quality and accessible parks and green spaces are at the heart of the community and meet the needs of everyone who lives, works, visits or invests in Leeds, now and for the future (Ref 5). The Parks and Green Space Strategy looks at the contribution made to priorities nationally and locally, and how it fits within the Leeds Cultural Strategy to develop parks and green spaces (Ref 3). Consultation is being undertaken to develop a vision for the future of Leeds City Council owned and managed public parks and green spaces beyond 2020, and a strategy for how to deliver that vision over the next 10 years. The new strategy will replace the previous strategy which runs to 2020 (Ref 9).

In light of the LIFE P.A.R.C. project, the NBS here presented consisted in the restoration of the fluvial and ecological continuity of the Magra and Vara rivers in the Montemarcello-Magra Regional Natural Park. The intervention implemented the removal of artificial barriers blocking the water continuity currently affecting biodiversity conservation. In the meantime, several activities implemented focused on restoring the area along the stream with the creation of walking paths and the use of signs to spread environmental awareness about the key habitat provision services of the area (1).