€10,000 - €50,000

Together with the Office for Urban Greenery and Waters of the City of Leipzig, the charitable association Ökolöwe Leipzig started the green facades initiative "Kletterfix - Green Walls for Leipzig" in 2015. The project aims at creating awareness about the multiple benefits of urban green walls and inspiring action of tenants and landlords on private property. As a measure mandated by the Urban Clean Air Plan, green facades improve the urban microclimate, general living conditions and combat particulate matter pollution. On-site advice about suitable plants and maintenance is provided upon application and respective seeds for up to 5 plants are sent for free to the applicants by the city department (1, 3, 7).

“The Nottingham in Bloom campaign is a city-wide partnership which includes residents, businesses, schools, community groups and a wide range of volunteers. The aim is to encourage more people to get involved to improve their local area. Together they [through the campaign] produce horticultural excellence and enhance the local landscape, the environment and the character of Nottingham.” (Ref. 1)

The Pasteur clinic in Toulouse installed a 500m² vegetable garden on the roof of its building in 2014. Maintained by clinic employees and various associations, the garden makes it possible to develop a friendly atmosphere and learn gardening while promoting biodiversity (Ref. 2). The garden grows produce including green beans, tomatoes, basil, strawberries and raspberries, (Ref. 3) and contains flowers such as nasturtiums, Cosmos, tagettes and edible chrysanthemums (Ref. 4).

Citizen Farm was a start-up founded by Pierre Osswald (Ref. 3). The project began with an experimental urban farm in a vegetable garden of Raymond 6. The ozarium farm (a vegetable aquarium) uses a technique called aquaponia (Ref. 5). This technique grows all kinds of plants and vegetables indoors in an entirely natural way. Fertilizer or watering are not needed. Plants feed on the nutrients in the aquarium: water and fish discharges. In return, they purify and oxygenate fish water. It is an ecological and educational innovation which is surfacing as an "eco-responsible" trend. (Ref. 1, 2). The Citizen farm initative was ended in 2018 due to financial difficulties (Ref. 35).

In June 2012, the Vertical Plants at the Strasbourg National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) were installed by two second-year students. They along with faculty and students undertook a technical and regulatory feasibility study, before taking steps to mobilise local companies to meet the costs of the project (Ref. 1). The advantage is not only aesthetic, but the wall has thermal and acoustic properties, and serves as a refuge for biodiversity and is even capable of absorbing atmospheric pollution (Ref. 2).

The Climate Friendly Gardeners Project is based at Windmill Community Gardens in the Bobber’s Mill area of Nottingham. The project teaches local residents about sustainable gardening practices in the context of the climate change affecting the UK, through a renovated community allotment garden.”
(ref 1, 2)

The initiative created the first in the city anti-smog garden around a local school. The garden serves multiple purposes as it will include: a greenhouse and a composter, the air-pollution absorbing plants that will attract birds and insects and protect the school from urban dust and noise, a vegetable garden, houses for hedgehogs, birds and butterflies, a 'sensory' path for medicinal gymnastics, a roofed gazebo, a meteorological station and a book exchange booth. It is open to other schools and kindergartens and the general public during the school working hours - for educational purposes and recreation [1,2].

This NBS comes as a reply against the municipality of Iasi which in 2013 cited lack of visibility and aesthetic preoccupation decided to cut over 100 linden trees and replace them with Japanese acacia in the city centre. The action enraged the inhabitants of the city who alongside local and national NGOs took the matter into their own hands and protested. As such in 2015 the municipality re-planted the linden trees (1).

Numerous developments have been carried out at the National Veterinary School of Toulouse's (ENVT) green campus to make the site more conducive to the maintenance and development of biodiversity as result of the school's "VERT VET" (GREEN VET) club (Ref. 2). The green changes began as a result of the school's 2008 sustainable development policy (Ref. 1). Among its many functions and activities, the policy helped raise awareness, clean ponds, and a well, construct a vegetable garden and make beehives and bird nest boxes in the campus's two classified forests (Ref. 3).

The garden is an opportunity for training, leisure and coexistence where the teaching of ecological gardening is combined with the love of plants and the social use of land. Consolidated in just one year as a training point for the unemployed without losing that playful-neighborhood component with which it opened its doors. In it the volunteers develop a methodology of teaching that facilitates the socialization and the reintegration work when acquiring knowledge in gardening and carpentry. (ref 1)