About

NaturEscape A garden in an urban park: nature in mind and wellbeing at heart Never have we needed outdoor places for learning and wellbeing as much as we do now.. When Oxford City Council decommissioned the very dilapidated mini-golf course in our local park, we thought that the area could be re-purposed and designed as a outdoor space for play, wildlife and learning and our project began. What is NaturEscape? NaturEscape is a designed garden for family-centred play and learning. It is designed with the following key ingredients: Place - a sense of belonging to a community in a lesser known part of the city People - a community with wide reaching cultural diversity Plants - which are so important for education, survival and beauty Play - relaxation essential for healthy human development and wellbeing. Drawing on the philosophy of the Forest School movement and the inspiration of local people, this garden will be home for various groups that support outdoor play, exploration, and interaction with natural elements such as water, fire and vegetation. The focus is on developing confidence and self-esteem through creative and hands-on experiences in a natural setting. What will our NaturEscape Garden be like? Our project will be innovative in that the imperative is good unobtrusive design that feels like a natural landscape for educative play and well being. It will be an exploratory space with the emphasis on planting wild flowers and edible foraging. It will be located within and integral to a much loved urban park and support a culturally diverse community with both economic and social disadvantage and thriving entrepreneurial spirit. It will also support ecological diversity with rainwater harvesting, native hedging and bee and insect friendly planting and of course the pond It will be stewarded by programmes to support communication, social cohesion and confidence and reduce anxiety. Our site is currently more like a small field than a forest or a garden! We have two magnificent Horse chestnuts on the boundary of the park, part of an extensive avenue planted when the park was built in 1934. We will plant trees and new hedges– wild fruit trees, Field maples and fruit bushes – but we need to introduce natural elements for play much more quickly whilst the trees grow. Our solutions are to create a meadow that can house paths and dens, to cut dens and nooks into the mature hornbeam hedging, create a hillock and a pond. A sensory path will run through the centre area leading to a circle area for gatherings and fires. We will utilise the shade from the Horse chestnuts as an area for canvas shelters, as well as introducing natural play elements in the trees and on the ground. Rainwater harvesting and a mud play kitchen are other elements for the children to explore and value the environment with all year activities including foraging, helping to plant the trees and watching the site develop. Insect and bee friendly planting and the pond will encourage biodiversity on the site and fulfil a crucial role in creating an ecosystem. Who is NaturEscape for ? This project is being led by People Place and Participation Ltd, a social enterprise and charitable Community Benefit Society that took on a decommissioned children’s centre in the heart of the park and in 2018 turned it into a thriving community hub. It houses a nursery, cafe, shop and health centre. This is Flo’s- The Place in the Park and NaturEscape is their latest collaboration with Oxford City Council. We have talked to users of the park, the council, local community leaders and outdoor play specialists in our area, and our design is based on their needs and intentions. The daycare nursery at Flo’s for 2 to 5 year olds, would like to use Naturescape at least twice a week. Others in the area would work with groups of older children from all our surrounding schools and youth groups. The local Dad’s group would also use it weekly. NaturEscape will be fenced and gated, but still available for use by anybody in the community at times when not booked by community groups. What are the challenges we face ? The biggest challenge is raising the money to build our design. We estimate we need £40,000 in total. But we can work in stages. And we have expert fund-raisers in our team who have successfully implemented and sustained other large-scale community projects in our area over the last ten years (Barracks Lane Community Garden; Flo’s the Place in the Park). Another challenge is to make the area accessible and welcoming whilst discouraging vandalism. Of particular importance to our local community is to create a ‘dog-free’ area where families feel safe with young children. Research into usage of the park during our ‘lockdown’ period found that the prevalence of dogs was off-putting for many Asian families. We also need to think carefully about our planting strategy – we want the area to be as natural as possible, but an over-emphasis on ‘native’ planting may not be welcoming to all groups. What is the plan? Our first sketch design (included) has been approved by the city council and other key stakeholders in the project. We will start work in the Autumn of 2020, security and planting being our first priorities. We are raising funds now. Who are we? The NaturEscape team is led by People, Place and Participation Ltd (the organisation behind Flo’s the Park in the park, working with garden designers who are also local residents. Annie Davy Annie is a highly experienced consultant, adviser and national and international speaker on early years education, educational leadership, mindfulness and outdoor learning. Author o “ A Sense of Place - mindful practice outdoors published by Bloomsbury. She is the Strategic and Community consultant for People, Place and Participation Ltd - Flo’s - The Place in the Park o Kate Jury Kate is a garden designer and horticulturalist. Kate graduated from the Oxford College of Garden Design with a post-graduate diploma in Residential Landscape Architecture. Previously she studied horticulture at the English Gardening School in Chelsea, graduating with distinction as top student in her year. Kate is a pre-registered member of the Society of Garden Designers. She has also been actively involved in the Barracks Lane Community Garden, where she was a trustee for 6 years, and currently runs a programme for child asylum seekers in the garden Laura Burt Laura has been working in horticultural maintenance and design for 12 years following a career as a photographer. She is about to embark on the design course at the Oxford College of Garden Design. Having completed a foundation year in Art Therapy at Goldsmiths University the use of outdoor space for wellbeing is an area of garden design that she would like to explore further. Some background information on the area and the park Florence Park is in the Cowley area of Oxford, The park is popular with people of all ages and backgrounds, and attracts visitors from across the city. The dense estates and streets that boundary the park house incredibly diverse communities. It is a vibrant, dynamic area with residents coming from a wide range of ethnic, cultural, social and economic backgrounds. Over 40 native languages are spoken by the pupils of one local school and across the five local council wards BAME residents make up 43% of the population. Over the past ten years the area has seen rapid population growth, 40% since 2001, predominantly through immigration and growth in student numbers, with a very positive impact on the local economy including growth in small business and commercial initiatives. Alongside this, there has been a growing interest in community-led projects with creative, environmentally sustainable and socially positive outcomes. Further information https://www.flosoxford.org.uk http://www.barrackslanegarden.org.uk

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