Thame and Chinnor Wild Gardens

21st Century Thame’s ‘Thame and Chinnor Wild Gardens project’ is an extension of their successful Hedgehog Highways project. After connecting with over 150 people who’ve taken on the challenge to trying to connect their gardens with their neighbours and allowing hedgehogs in they wanted to make sure that those gardens are providing what hedgehogs need to survive.

There are already many gardens in Thame and Chinnor which are wildlife friendly. Their goal has to be that all gardens are wildlife friendly. We have to share our gardens with the creatures that have always lived in them – well before we built houses and fenced them in.

Our gardens are now the most important habitat for hedgehogs. They can’t live in farmers fields because of machinery and pesticides and a lack of suitable places to sleep. The pesticides used to protect the crops kill the food that hedgehogs need to survive. So we need to provide a safe space and plenty of food or the humble, nationally loved treasure will inevitably die out.

Is your garden already wildlife friendly ? Please do our survey and find out.

What the project has done already:

1. We’ve run sessions with the Guides, Cubs, Rainbows to introduce children to realising that their gardens don’t need to be patio!
2. We had a whole eco area at Thame Carnival introducing everyone to what they can do including making their own simple bug hotels, taking pollinator plants for their gardens, talking about hedgehogs and how important gardens are now for wildlife.
3. A Pollinator bed has been planted up at Thame Memorial Gardens, and 2 on North Street. Patches of pollinator flowers which each flower at different times of the year are important oases in the sea of concrete that are our towns. Birds, butterflies and many other insects need these stopping points in order to be able to undertake the journeys their lives depend on.
4. We have represented the birds and bees at the 3 primary school summer fetes.
5. The Chinnor and Thame Friends of the Earth run fantastic Green Fayres twice a year and we’ve been allowed to have stalls at these.
6. A few of our team have been out and about visiting you in your gardens giving advice on what you can do to make your garden more wild and helping you encourage hedgehogs to live in them. At least 20 of these garden visits took place this year and we’ll be continuing with these next year
7. As the results of our work will take place within private gardens the only way we can really know if we are succeeding is for you to tell us how you are getting on with rewilding your garden. So please do complete our online survey and show us that there are more and more oases across our neighbourhoods.
8. We would love to come to your garden and give you some simple ideas on how to encourage more wildlife – complete the form to request yours.