Our Natural Spaces

Operation Education!

An educational programme, the sharing of experiences, and learning of inclusive skills to raise knowledge around gardens and local green spaces. This project was chosen to increase people’s connection with nature, to encourage thinking about how we impact climate change and how we look after the environment and nature in our local surroundings. This project would provide opportunities for engagement activities and events such as nature trails and forest schools in the area. 

Planting and greening in the area

Planting of wildflowers for pollinating insects, creating community herb gardens and fruit trees, and creating wildlife corridors and shelters. The rationale for this project is the cost-effective and low maintenance nature of this project. The project also brings great benefits including an increase in wildlife and insects, and increased knowledge and skills around planting and pollinating insects. 

Improve access to & facilities within green space

Methods for this include improving travel options to and from green spaces, improving pushchair and wheelchair access, increasing the availability of bins, public toilets and composting facilities. Residents chose this project to improve physical and mental health, and create greater ownership and maintenance of local green spaces.

Introduce sustainable drainage systems & car parks

Replace concrete and tarmac car parks with a garden brick or slab surface to create sustainable urban drainage through car park redevelopment. This project was chosen as a better solution with greater water drainage than conventional methods. The aim would be that all new car parks would be built this way. 

Map green areas & natural assets in Selby

Share information about all the green spaces through a mapping system to educate the community on how to access and enjoy nature, as well as to feel safe doing so. This project would provide the opportunity to see where these green areas are, and also how we can enhance or protect them. 

You can check out the goals for our other themes here:

Click here to access our handy jargon buster

Jargon Busting

  • A strip of natural habitat connecting populations of wildlife otherwise separated by cultivated land, roads, etc. Hedgerows, field margins, wetlands and woodland are all ‘wildlife corridors’ and act as a link from one environment to another. They connect individual - and sometimes isolated - habitats, allowing wildlife to move freely and safely between them, without threat from predators or traffic.

    Roads, buildings and arable fields create huge barriers to wildlife. By filling in the gaps and connecting what must seem like an impossible obstacle course, wildlife - both great and small - can move safely from one place to another.

    Find out more: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk

  • Sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) are systems designed to efficiently manage the drainage of surface water in the urban environment.

    Sustainable urban drainage systems can provide an alternative to, or addition to, traditional drainage systems where surface water is drained directly and quickly into underground, piped drainage.

    As population has increased, particularly in urban areas, and ‘soft’, permeable landscape has been replaced with hard surfaces, surface water runoff has reached traditional piped drainage faster and in larger quantities. This has been exacerbated by the loss of rural features that might once have slowed the passage of surface water, being replaced with large, intensively farmed fields that rapidly discharge surface water into piped drainage or waterways that make their way into urban areas.

    The result has been higher peak flows resulting in serious flooding of urban areas, pollution, damage to habitat and contamination of groundwater sources.

    Sustainable urban drainage systems aim to mimic 'natural' drainage by adopting techniques to deal with surface water runoff locally, through collection, storage, and cleaning before allowing it to be released slowly back into the environment.