Conduct a baseline survey before and after NBS implementation

A living green wall packed with plants including primula and thyme was the latest addition to the university's Medway Campus. It was part of a university research project that assessed the benefits of small-scale living walls (ref. 1).

The Green Grid aimed to link urban and rural neighborhoods with a network of quality green spaces and corridors of landscape, recreational and ecological value. The aim was to achieve the added benefits by managing open space resources as a set of linkable sites rather than in isolation. It was a planning intervention that was focused on connecting a high quality, functional green space network (Ref 1). The intervention was part of "Greening the Gateway Kent & Medway" (Ref 2).

The Barcelona Green Infrastructure and Biodiversity Plan 2020 includes the development of several urban green corridors to increase ecological and social connectivity within the city. The green corridor of Passeig de Sant Joan is one of the first of these corridors implemented. The project consisted of the renovation of the promenade through tree and shrub planting and permeable green pavement installation, creating a green boulevard that benefits pedestrians and extend the urban green spaces, which gave new life to the neighborhood and allowed the expansion of small businesses and tourism (Ref 1).

Green space created behind Rock Ferry library on unused land. The plot of unused land, owned by the Wirral Council, signed a lease with the 'Grow Sow Well' project to run a volunteering scheme and sessions for the community (particularly aiming to help people with mental health issues). Grow Sow Well worked with residents, schools and community groups, bringing people together to celebrate their area and increase awareness of healthy eating and food production. (Ref. 1, 2) This lease has was transferred to the organisation called the Utopia Project (works with young people and includes horticulture). (Ref. 8)

The Chartreuse Park has been chosen as a pilot site for the EU-funded VALUE project, enabling the City of Liège to finance and pilot a participatory requalification process for the Chartreuse Park. Since the acquisition of the site (about 20 hectares of park and green spaces), the City has taken several steps to recognize the historical and environmental potentialities of the Park and to integrate its values in the operations for the urban development of this old military site (the Fort de la Chartreuse). As a result of broad consultation with citizens, between 2012 and 2014, three circular walkways were created in the park connected to each other, enabling greater access to the park (Ref. 1).

The first external green wall in the public space in Poland was installed on the surface of a 30 square meters wall of the Infobox building in Gdynia [1,2]. The project serves aesthetic purposes and aims to improve air quality. The wall was composed of the plants suitable for the Polish climate conditions [3].

This pilot project to create social gardens in Gdynia was developed by a cooperative of the local government, NGO sector and businesses. The project involved creating 3 (and finally 6) social gardens in different locations of Gdynia (Oksywie, Grabówek and Redłowo). They serve ecologic (greenery planting), horticultural (jointly managed vegetable and herb gardens), social (community integration) and educational (workshops on topics such as healthy lifestyle or building bird boxes) purposes. The gardens are being co-managed on a voluntary basis by the local communities with the help of an appointed gardener and an animator [1,4]. The project is based on 4 pillars: 1) social participation; 2) innovation; 3) social sensitivity; 4) food anthropology [5].

Tondiraba is a green urban area located in Lasnamäe, it is a valuable area with a diverse landscape which at the start of the initiative was severely overgrown and randomly used. The city planned to build an eco-golf course where the diverse and species-rich landscape and protected species are preserved. The architecture of the golf course is based on the advantages of the natural location and an ‘eco-golf course' concept. These landscapes and their flora were generated with landscape maintenance methods, which results in ‘micro-communities’ in which the ecosystems characteristic of the given area would start developing (ref 1, 5).

In 2017, under a bigger project, the municipality of Sintra started the work for the rehabilitation of an area that included beaches and rivers, such as the Mata river. The NBS solves a problem of accumulation of water and sludge that was unsolved, through the recovery and cleaning of Ribeira da Mata (small river/brook), planting trees and promotion of an improvement in water quality and sand on the beach.
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This project aimed at the reconstruction of the Lepiku channel that is part of the drainage system, which starts next to the Tallinn Botanic Garden and includes wetlands, detention ponds, ditches and channels and flows into the Pirita river. The aim of the project was to improve the quality of the stormwater that flows into the Pirita river which is a Natura 2000 site and flows into the Baltic Sea. The work included: widening of channel bottom in different segments, creating artificial dykes and rapids and creating suitable conditions for the aquatic plants exhibited in Botanic Garden (ref 1). With the project, 200m of the channel was reconstructed (ref. 5).