Imagine a wilder world on your doorstep, with more nature everywhere in urban and rural areas. Read about how local residents in Shabbington, Buckinghamshire, launched a nature network to improve their village for wildlife as part of Team Wilder.

Our nature network was founded by Janet Jackson, Jen Silva and Alan Powell in May 2021. The idea came from a competition run by the Wild Aylesbury Vale project which aimed to encourage local residents to take action for nature.

We put the initial idea into the village newsletter to gauge the interest in the rest of the village. We've now got a Facebook group, and people have different responsibilities such as organising events to help us spread the work around,

We had an initial site visit from BBOWT to give us some direction and ideas for the first steps to take in setting up our nature network. We've also had support from the Wild Aylesbury Vale project which is funded by Buckinghamshire Council. 

We officially launched Shabbington Nature Network to the wider village at the open gardens event in June 2021. We had seed bombs for children to take home and plant in their gardens, and information for villagers to find out more about our plans and what they could do.

We found that using communication tools like a Facebook group and WhatsApp really helped us. These allowed us to navigate any concerns and work together with people who might have different opinions about our plans so we could find a middle ground. We found that lots of people are willing to help but everyone has different amounts of free time to commit. It's also great to have children and families involved. Keeping children involved helps inspire them and keeps the interest among adults too. We also hope that some of the young people might be the next generation of conservation enthusiasts!

We're lucky that being a working party under the Parish Council means that the PC deal with the finances, which removes the need for a committee. Any funding goes to the PC and needs to be allocated accordingly but being a working group removes some of the issues of being a separate group.

We've tried to have a presence at village events since we started the network. For example, we had a noticeboard at the village campout to tell people what we're doing, and we started building a bug hotel with schoolchildren at a village picnic. We've also started some small-scale planting on road verges and plan to do more of this around the village. Another great idea is sharing discounts on seeds. Villagers with allotments get a discount with a local nursery - sharing that with other residents who don’t have allotments has encouraged more growing and planting. We also ran a village photo competition and judged the entries at our information evening.

There are two key areas in the village that will be the focus of upcoming plans - part of the churchyard and village road verges. The first step is working out what is feasible and making sure there is support locally. It’s also important to ensure that there aren’t any major objections to our plans. 

A small area of the churchyard hasn’t been mowed. Some surveying is planned for 2022 to see which species are growing there and the diversity of plants in the area. 

There are several road verges which will be planted with pollinator friendly plants. A lot of plants have been donated which has been great and helps include the wider village. Contractors currently cut the road verges so establishing a mowing regime with them will be important going forwards. 

At the moment we're trying a small number of guided walks with a bird expert and hoping to open these out to the wider village in the future. There are also plans to buy a village wildlife camera to capture some images of the fantastic wildlife locally (including kingfishers, otters, badgers and more!) which will help to show villages the amazing wildlife that lives near them.

We really appreciated the advice from BBOWT that helped us to get started and create the Shabbington Nature Network.

If you would like help to get started with a similar project in your village or neighbourhood, contact us on teamwilder@bbowt.org.uk

If you're already part of a community group that's taking action for nature, you can add your group to our map.