UCL People and Nature Lab Seminar

In Person: UCL East One Pool Street room 211 - Report to reception at 13.50 Visit us | UCL East - UCL – University College London

Online over Teams: email [email protected] to receive online joining instructions

What happens when urban eco-restoration becomes a neighbourhood greening project? The Hackney Buzzline is a three-year initiative linking four parks through three housing estates in support of Hackney’s Local Nature Recovery Plan. In its first year, it began creating a chain of pollinator ‘pit-stops’, engaged almost 500 people, and generated ecological data from more than 3,000 bee and butterfly observations. Along the way, important questions have emerged: how can citizen science deliver robust evidence, what role do short-term projects play in building nature-friendly communities, and can biodiversity, not tidiness, define what makes a garden beautiful? This talk shares early learnings and their implications for future urban nature networks.

Rachael Cohen: Rachael argues that urban living alienates us from the earth, replacing ecological richness with a culturally ingrained idea that beauty in a garden means neatness and control. This ‘tidy’ aesthetic diminishes biodiversity and distances people from their connection with nature. She believes gardens should be valued as living systems, where the biodiverse is beautiful. As Postcode Gardener, she works with residents, schools, and community groups to green streets and estates, creating pollinator habitats and shifting how urban nature is seen and valued. Her work on the Hackney Buzzline shows how care for local spaces helps to restore ecosystems and communities. Rachael can be contacted on [email protected]

Gerard Tissier :Gerry argues that much wildlife gardening advice focuses on what individuals can do in isolation, without considering how those efforts connect across neighbourhoods to form coherent ecological networks. In cities, these ecological networks depend on social networks — people working together to create and sustain habitats. Gerry calls these ecosocial networks: the joining together of people and spaces to support both biodiversity and community wellbeing.

Gerry’s interest in neighbourhood greening began over a decade ago in Hackney, when he formed a Friends group for a local park, built a flagship community garden on an abandoned car park, and led Friends of the Earth’s ground-breaking 10xGreener project, featured in the BBC Cities: Nature’s New Wild documentary. He introduced the UK’s first Postcode Gardener, now rolling out nationally, and helped establish Hackney’s first glyphosate-free zone.

To deepen his understanding of the ecological impacts of this work, Gerry completed an MSc in wildlife conservation at UWE Bristol and became a Bristol Zoological Society Conservation of the Future. He went on to found the Hackney Buzzline, a pioneering urban pollinator corridor, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London.

Gerry can be contacted on [email protected]

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