Quick start guide to urban greening
Guidance - 24-06-2025
The secrets to urban greening success as seen by local councils and their partners.
Climate resilience - Community engagement
How to be bold, brave and innovative for people and nature
We all want to see greener, healthier, more resilient and prosperous towns and cities. The challenge can be knowing where to start.
We asked our network of local authorities and their partners to reveal what it takes to unlock the benefits of nature for all.
Drawing on years of experience trialling new ideas and ways of working, they have summarised ten areas of work into a ‘quick reference guide’ for others who are keen to embark on an urban greening transformation journey.
There’s no hard-and-fast rule as to which order you might tackle these. They’re designed to be followed and revisited in the way that’s most appropriate for your place.
Get familiar with your green and blue estate
“Mapping is all about knowing where you can get the most bang for your buck” - Nick, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Parks Partnership
Gather information about the current condition of your natural infrastructure, in order to see the future potential for people, place, climate and nature.
Investigate and analyse factors such as the extent, condition, connectivity, use, actual income and expenditure of your green and blue spaces.
You could put an economic value on the social and environmental benefits of your natural estate as it is now and present it in a visual way. This can help bring the benefits to life for key stakeholders and encourage them along the journey with you.
Take a look at some examples of this approach from Birmingham and Nottingham via the buttons below.
Ask your communities what they need
“Before, they were asking for more services like doctors or supermarkets. Now they’re asking for more quality green space” - Simon, Birmingham City Council
When nature grows stronger, so do communities. Take time to ask local residents and Voluntary, Community, Faith, Social Enterprise (VCFSE) organisations what they need and want from green spaces, and how they can contribute to shaping, activating and animating them. Use this process to co-develop a clear and ambitious vision for transformation in your town or city, and embed it in your green infrastructure strategy and plan.
Spread the word about improvements you make, showing where neighbourhoods started out and how far they’ve come on their green journey. Who was involved, how did they make a difference and what does it mean to them?
Put health at the heart of green space
"It’s about building a coalition of the willing; organisations with a shared vision and values to improve the health and wellbeing of communities.” - Andrew, Islington Borough Council
Natural space in towns and cities is not just about greener urban arteries. It’s about cleaner human arteries too.
Work with partners across health, social care and VCFSE sectors to put health at the heart of your green infrastructure strategy and plans.
A Natural Capital Account can calculate the equivalent health benefits of natural spaces, and help to engage potential partners with the idea of parks and greenspace as a cost-effective way to wellbeing.
Invite these partners to co-create health service delivery in natural spaces, including through green social prescribing and improving the active travel network.
Be ambitious for environmental equity
"It changes the conversation as to how important green space is in towns and cities...suddenly people get it.” - Nick, Birmingham City Council
Work to identify the areas with the lowest environmental equity, to make sure you give people and nature a helping hand where it’s needed most.
You can use environmental and socio-economic data to map and index local urban environmental quality. In Birmingham, they were able to use these visuals to engage busy councillors in the most deprived wards as champions for green infrastructure investment.
Click the button below to discover more about environmental justice mapping in Birmingham.
Grow your urban nature network
“Nature networks don’t exist on their own. Partners and advocates are essential if you’re going to roll it out across a town or city” - Linda, Edinburgh City Council
Healthier natural habitats lead to healthier parks and ultimately healthier people. Grow your urban nature network to bring more of these ‘ecosystem services’ – aka nature’s benefits – to people and places.
Take a look at existing ecosystem services provided by urban natural infrastructure in your place. This could include climate resilience and flood mitigation, or cultural benefits such as recreation and mental wellbeing.
Co-design the new network with stakeholders and communities, by identifying gaps, solutions and improvements with them. Growing the network in this way will increase awareness of the benefits nature can provide to people and place, and help enhance quality, connectivity and accessibility in the most effective way.
Reach further into your community and green space
“Our local parks foundation can access funds and work with the community differently to how we can as a council.” - Martin, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council
Nature and people grow stronger by reaching up and out. Partnership working can bring something unique and valuable to the table, helping you to focus your ambitions, diversify income, share resources and achieve common goals for people and nature.
Whilst many local authorities recognise these benefits, it’s not always that straightforward. It’s important to take a strategic approach to set the partnership up for success.
Ensure there is a clear understanding of purpose, roles, ways of working and values, responsibilities and reporting. Establish your collective approach to risk, especially financial risk, and plan risk management too.
Develop new sources of investment
"Our ambition is bigger than our pockets. We need to look at our spaces and how we package them up into investible products” - Kat, Plymouth City Council
With public funding more stretched than ever, new sources of long-term, dedicated investment are a lifeline for the bees, butterflies, parks and ponds in our towns and cities.
Explore your green finance potential by matching up what your spaces can deliver with motivations for investment from a variety, or ‘blended’ mix, of sources.
Look to co-design a pipeline of ‘ready-to-go’ projects with partners and communities, making the investment case through the social, environmental and economic benefits they could deliver.
You’ll need to think about a financial vehicle to receive investment in the first place, and how to ringfence funds for reinvestment.
You could also look to aggregate projects to create attractive investment propositions.
Promote green space as valuable infrastructure
"You need a clear elevator pitch. When you can bring it back to pound and pennies, it really makes a business case.” - Ollie, Camden Borough Council
We know that people benefit from having quality green space nearby, but their ‘value’ in economic terms can be hard to prove. One way to make the case is by calculating the benefit to cost ratio of your green estate (not just the maintenance cost, or income generated) as part of a Natural Capital Account.
Think about the positive change you want to deliver for people and nature, considering the big challenges the place needs to address and the opportunities for transformation through your green space.
Then use the benefit to cost ratio to promote how it delivers outcomes for council-wide priorities such as climate, health, skills, travel.
Be socially entrepreneurial
“We’ve proven that there is great opportunity for charitable and commercial trading in parks.” - Martin, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council
Nature unlocks people’s better nature. Parks and green spaces create more opportunities for people to connect with the outdoors, and provide a valuable respite from busy urban lives.
Tap into our affinity for the natural world and re-position parks and green spaces as a popular local ‘cause’. It’s a proven way to attract and retain significant income, investment and resources to maintain these spaces long-term.
Local authorities can create the capacity to act with charitable purpose in different ways. This could include partnerships with the VCFSE sector, or through a foundation such as The Parks Foundation in BCP.
Nurture your green team and wider ‘family’
"Take everybody on the journey with you, so that everyone is invested in what you’re trying to achieve” - Adrienne, Nottingham City Council
Create the space, culture and confidence to enable your green team to challenge the status quo – and bring nature home.
They’ll need your support to meet the significant challenges and opportunities the 21st century presents for nature in towns and cities.
Community led-greening and stewardship of your green estate are likely to be a key part of this. Take a look at the approach they’ve taken to this in Nottingham.
Hear more from our contributors
Our network of peers from local authorities and partners took part in a webinar where they discuss their secrets to urban greening success in more detail.
These tips were co-curated by participants in the Future Parks Accelerator project. With thanks to The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and National Trust who funded and supported the Future Parks Accelerator, enabling the design and delivery of the work shown here.
Helping you deliver for people, place and nature
The Nature Towns and Cities accreditation scheme recognises towns and cities putting nature and green infrastructure at the heart of their places and communities.
Designed to incentivise at-scale, place-based transformation, accreditation will help you plan how green and blue infrastructure can deliver benefits across a range of priorities. These are wide-ranging, from public health to climate resilience, community empowerment and nature recovery. And they cover pressing issues like economic growth, active travel, and youth skills and employment.
