Big Wildlife Garden
Eco-Schools are working with Natural England to help schools progress with the theme of Biodiversity. The Big Wildlife Garden is a programme developed by Natural England to specifically increase biodiversity in gardens.
What is the Big Wildlife Garden?
The Big Wildlife Garden aims to put you in touch with other people who love wildlife and are passionate about their gardens. Doing one small thing today will make a massive difference to England’s wildlife.
All the activities and materials developed by the Big Wildlife Garden programme have been approved by Eco-Schools. This means that by registering your garden and taking an active part in the Big Wildlife Garden your school can progress to a Bronze, Silver or Green Flag
Eco-Schools award.
How to gain a Bronze, Silver or Green Flag by being involved with the Big Wildlife Garden.
Firstly you need to register your school garden.
Once registered you can start working on making your garden better for wildlife. Write about your patch and what you have in it. View your garden, upload photos and track progress towards award levels.
Then start adding wildlife wonders to your garden. Some of the wonders take a little more work, but it can be fun to get others involved in helping out. The more wonders added the more points that are gained, which leads to a garden award.
Make sure you add the ‘Involve Others ’ wonder, to show you are involving other people in developing your garden.
View the My friends section and use the Explore map to find friends.
Share ideas with members and keep an online wildlife diary for other garden friends to look at. To help you further and encourage wildlife to the garden search the tips in the How to section.
Don’t forget to write in your Eco-Schools action plan that you are registered with the Big Wildlife Garden and what garden award you are trying to achieve. Remember to upload photos in your garden diary to keep a record of what you are doing.
Levels of Awards
Bronze
- When you have achieved a Big Wildlife Garden Bronze certificate by gaining 5 points you can then use this to show biodiversity work for the Bronze Eco-Schools award.
Silver
- When you have achieved 25 points and received the Big Wildlife Garden Silver certificate, you can show evidence of your hard work to go towards Eco-Schools Silver award.
Green Flag
- Finally when you achieve 50 Big Wildlife points or more and received a Gold (50 points) or Green (75 points) Garden certificate your school can use this and future work as evidence for the biodiversity topic in your Eco-Schools green flag application.
Achieving the Gold or Green Big Wildlife Garden certificate will count as a major biodiversity project for Eco-Schools awards.
To join the Big Wildlife Garden and for more information visit:
http://www.bwg.naturalengland.org.uk