Aim

Nature Needs You: Fund hundreds of volunteer sessions helping local nature recover so we all benefit too

Nature gives us so much: the air we breathe, places to connect, space to feel calm. 

Nature needs year-round care in return but this is often overlooked.

Without year-round care, wildflower meadows perish, young trees die and ponds silt up, leaving wildlife with less food, shelter and safe places to breed. It leaves people worse off too. 

When habitats decline so does their capacity to keep the people around them well. 

People with limited access to nature face significantly higher risks of poor mental health. Defra estimates the NHS could save £2.1 billion a year if everyone had good access to nature - but 40% of people in Bristol and Bath live in green space deprived areas.

Your Park's Nature Needs You campaign aims to raise at least £10,000 towards hundreds of volunteer sessions across Bristol and Bath - the year-round care at scale that really makes a difference.

Right now in a park near you, a hoverfly is at work 

Most people think it's a wasp or bee. She goes uncredited but is doing one of the most important jobs in nature: quietly pollinating the wildflowers that feed the insects, which feed the birds, which drop the seeds, which grow and start the basis of a new habitat. She strengthens the whole ecosystem around her.

But without year-round care, habitats like this could be gone. Without pollen from flowers, she will not return. Action can be taken to prevent this, but most people only notice once the buzzing, thriving natural space in their local park is gone.

Now picture a person in that same park a few metres away, doing something just as easy to overlook. She's clearing invasive species, bramble from a hedge line and returns week after week. Like the hoverfly, she's quietly caring for a space we depend on and rarely gets the credit. 

But ask what volunteering gives her and the answer is "turning up somewhere she'd wanted to belong to for months, being useful and having people notice when she doesn't show up". Her confidence has improved, she's made friends and she feels healthier. The positive cycle continues, but only with her support.

Donate today and you could help:

• Mobilise over 500 volunteers into regular action through weekly sessions across more than 30 parks. We support these volunteers so more people build skills, confidence and connection to care for the environment in the long term — and for many, that's where their own wellbeing story starts too.
• Restore and care for around 100,000m² of meadows and grassland through seasonal cutting, re-seeding and ongoing management.
• Support trees and hedgerows through mulching, watering and protection so they establish and strengthen habitat corridors for wildlife.
• Enhance ponds and freshwater habitats so amphibians such as frogs and great crested newts (an endangered and strictly protected species) have places to breed and feed.
• Create habitat features such as log piles, dead hedges, bat boxes and rough grassland so birds, bats and invertebrates can thrive.
• Open up sessions to people who are usually shut out including Disabled people, unpaid carers, people with mental health conditions and communities from different ethnic backgrounds so that as nature recovers, so do the people caring for it: through improved mental health, confidence, connection and a sense of belonging.

Nature Needs You now more than ever before

Extreme weather threatens habitat and pollinator survival. Bumblebees struggle to fly above 30°C, while drought-stressed plants produce less nectar and can die before caterpillars complete their life cycles. If we do not turn up and adapt plans, habitats become damaged. We must also adapt activities for different people's needs, otherwise communities will remain excluded from nature recovery and its health benefits.

We need nature. Nature needs volunteers. Volunteers need us to organise sessions, plan activity, support and train them so they benefit. Your Park cannot do this without donations. Donations fund the equipment, plants, bulbs and professional support needed for safe, consistent sessions.

Let's ensure our habitats, hover flies and army of volunteers are still here next summer

• £25 could put tools in volunteers' hands for multiple sessions over a year
• £50 could buy plants and seeds to bring a patch the size of a tennis court back to life
• £100 could fund a month of hands-on care in a park through inclusive sessions for Disabled people
• £250 could pay for a full season of care in a park - a team looking after it after storm damage, heatwaves, vandalism or during bird nesting or planting seasons

Since 2023 and only because of donors like you, Your Park has:

• Worked in 66 parks and welcomed 2,435 volunteers who gave 12,909 hours (six working years)
• Cared for 139,999m2 of wildflower meadow - the size of around 1,000+ homes
• Planted 841 trees and over 16,000 bulbs, seeds and plug plants 
• Supported over 100 groups to care for their green spaces and recruit volunteers
• Watched people who take part report real, measurable change in themselves: 92% improved wellbeing, 72% increased confidence, and 57% feeling less lonely.

Give today and support the year-round sessions and skilled hands that turn one off volunteering into a whole year of care and benefit for all.

Can't give? Sharing this page now reaches people we can't - please forward it to one person who cares about nature, health, or both.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made