Nurturing North Street Gardens

North Street Gardens is in a prime city-centre location, close to the station, large offices including Aviva and City of York Council, hotels, restaurants and shops. It is an important green space for wildlife found along the River Ouse and a habitat stepping stone in the city’s Green Corridor network, connecting St Andrew’s Church garden, the Memorial Gardens and the City Walls but has not received the attention that it deserves. 

The grass is cut regularly and the bins are emptied but the gardens otherwise receive little on-going maintenance and are currently run down. As a result, they attract anti-social behaviour, making residents and workers feel uncomfortable and not wanting to use the space and has deterred volunteers from supporting its restoration. Recent volunteer activity as part of the York Cares Big Community Challenge 2023 has led to a noticeable decline in litter, drug and alcohol paraphernalia as well as weeds. We are keen to capitalise on this and make further improvements, making the area a safer, more welcoming, vibrant and multi-use space for all to enjoy. 

York Cares is an independent employee-volunteering charity bringing businesses, employees, and communities together to make York a better place. We empower employees to support their communities through our programmes, creating a positive impact for both the employees and the community. Our programmes deliver tangible benefits for local people and to employers in terms of workforce development, employee wellbeing and community engagement. 

Our vision

Working in partnership with our friends at the ECO Team at City of York Council, St Nicks and York BID, we will prepare and protect the gardens against the impacts of climate change by:

• planting up empty flower beds with drought and flood resilient herbaceous perennials and tansy to support and increase opportunities for pollinators and wildlife, improving biodiversity; 
• installing hanging baskets to create pollinator friendly stepping stones where there is currently no refuge; 
• replacing large shrubs that attract drug/alcohol misuse and litter with grass seed, bulbs and fruit trees; 
• installing accessible seating and benches to encourage people to connect with and enjoy the garden and the increased biodiversity;
• installing appropriately themed murals to create a vibrant atmosphere which promotes nature and invites visitors to enjoy and relax in the space;
• installing a birdhouse library (subject to planning permission) to encourage people to come into the space to exchange books, the initial stock of which will have a predominantly environmental theme;
• improving the walkway to provide an attractive short cut to/from the city centre and increase footfall through the gardens.  

We will encourage organisations to adopt North Street Gardens as a community hub for events, volunteering and education.  We will link with the Green Corridors York project, which connects habitats for wildlife whilst also connecting communities to the natural environment on their doorstep. We will engage volunteers from local businesses, including Aviva and City of York Council amongst others based on North Street, as well as the local community to get involved in the improvements and to raise awareness about the importance of the space as a natural habitat. This will create a sense of ownership of the project by the community, ensuring the long-term sustainability of the area. 

York’s green spaces need to be managed in a sustainable way that meets the challenges of climate change whilst increasing opportunities for wildlife. The Local Nature Recovery Strategy has called for communities to come together to combat the effects of climate change. York meets this challenge through the Green Corridor Project. York’s partner network has been working together to locate opportunities to restore, improve and create habitats to increase biodiversity and combat the effects of climate change. This has to be achieved through volunteer commitment, dedicated motivators for change and appropriate site locations, all on limited resources. North Street is an ideal opportunity to achieve this in a central location so that the space can be enjoyed by many people. 

Our aim is for the garden to become a vibrant, wildlife-friendly hub and a vital stepping stone in the wider Green Corridors network across the city, raising awareness of the need to increase opportunities for biodiversity whilst also providing a safe and beautiful place for relaxation and mindfulness.

We have been fortunate enough to receive some funding through the Nature Hubs Fund, which has given us a great basis from which to start the project, enabling us to buy some seating and some plants and bulbs and to pay for murals on two of the floodgates but with more funding we can do so much more: creating even more seating areas; adding fruit trees and another mural to make the area even more vibrant and welcoming.