Recent data shows that more than 40% of people say nature, wildlife and green spaces have been even more important to their wellbeing since the pandemic.* With this in mind, local housebuilder Barratt David Wilson Homes has committed to providing a long-lasting home for nature at its Kingsbrook development in Aylesbury, where itsshow home gardens have recently been designed to a gold and silver wild-life friendly standard as set out by the RSPB.

Barratt Developments has an ongoing partnership with the RSPB, the UK’s largest nature conservation charity, to ensure that wildlife can thrive alongside new residents at its developments. The four gardens, two silver, and two gold within the Orchard Green village at Kingsbrook, are the latest phase within the development to receive recognition from the charity.

The RSPB provides a point score for the wildlife-friendly features that are present in each garden, with the highest scoring gardens securing a gold status. Each of the gardens has integrated a range of wildlife-friendly characteristics, including bird boxes; hedgehog homes, and highways so that hedgehogs can travel safely between gardens; bee hotels, and deadwood features, to provide a home for insects and solitary bees; and composting facilities. Keeping wildlife safe is very important as some of them are quite vulnerable to human influence, that is why building things such as this can help them immensely. Searching websites like hedgehog kingdom as well as others targeted towards specific wildlife, can also be a great support for finding the best information on how to deal with these animals.

Karly Williams, Sales and Marketing Director at Barratt David Wilson North Thames, commented: “We are really proud of our seven-year-long partnership with the RSPB, which has been so important in helping us give wildlife a home at our developments. Given the increased importance of nature to our wellbeing in the last year, we hope that our silver and gold status wildlife-friendly show home gardens inspire our new residents to get involved and put in some simple measures to make their gardens wildlife-friendly too.”

Adrian Thomas, the RSPB’s wildlife gardening expert, commented: “Kingsbrook’s wildlife-friendly show home gardens are a wonderful example of how wildlife can be encouraged to thrive in our gardens. There are native hedgerows, hedgehog highways, and we’ve even seen newts in one of the new ponds and a blue tit in the nest boxes! We hope the gardens can be an inspiration to visitors and provide wildlife with much-needed places to nest, feed and rest.”