Seeing the wood for the trees: what makes Nottingham a 'green' city?

In October 2020 I was about a month into studying at the University of Nottingham. One Saturday morning I ran to Wollaton Park, with a fellow first year and a second year student who was showing us the way there. A misty haze covered the road and the smell of wet leaves was everywhere. 

We crossed Derby Road, jogged down a boulevard, and reached the lake’s south east corner. At the top of a nearby slope, Wollaton Hall looked pretty magnificent – shadowy and wreathed in mist – so I stopped and took a photo of it. Starting uni fresh from lockdown, I was finding it hard to get rid of the ‘fish out of water’ feeling, but I knew then that I’d always feel at home in Wollaton Park. By April 2021 I was running there pretty much every single day. 

In recent years, Nottingham's been paying a lot of attention to how it treats green spaces like Wollaton Park. In 2024 Nottingham City Council reported that public green and blue space covers 38.1% of Notts, as part of their then-recently-announced ‘Greenspace Strategy’ intended to grow public physical and mental health in Notts via closer contact with nature.

At the same time the, now well-loved, ‘Green Heart’ park opened on what was formerly a derelict part of Broadmarsh shopping centre. This quick succession of events confirmed that we’re a motivated city when it comes to taking care of our green spaces.

But this isn’t just recent sentiment – Nottingham’s love for green spaces goes back to the 70s and 80s, according to Peter Shepherd – director of ecological consultancy group BSG Ecology. 

After studying botany, then completing a PhD in urban ecology, at the University of Nottingham, Peter became Nottingham Conservation Officer at the Notts Wildlife Trust. From 1989 to 1993 he managed nature reserves in the city and supported the council in preparing the first ‘Nottingham Nature Conservation Strategy’. 

“The first ‘Urban Wildlife Group’ was set up in 1980 in Birmingham and the Black Country in response to an application to build on Moseley Bog,” says Peter, adding, “so Nottingham was hard on the heels in 1985. But of course, long before then, the City Group of the Wildlife Trust, and in particular Miss E.M Palmer, had been campaigning for important green spaces, like Martin’s Pond.”

“Nottingham was at the forefront of urban nature conservation,” he continues. “We were one of the few cities early on to undertake habitat inventories and the production of a nature conservation strategy.”

Back when the Green Heart park was announced in December 2020, Peter wrote in support of the idea on the BSG Ecology website. For Peter, its success since opening in October 2024 indicates how green spaces are interwoven with local life. 

“In my experience of working on a wide range of parks, nature reserves, the key test always is how much local people value and appreciate the space, as they are the ones who will protect it, fight proposals to build on it and look after it,” he says. “A space that provides access to trees, shrubs and flowers that people like to spend time in is often more valuable in terms of protecting such spaces than, say, a rare, lesser type of beetle that no one knows what it looks like.”

There’s something in that – if we want people to love their city, to stay in it, commit to it, and feel responsible for it, then it’s certainly very important to care for local parks. In my own case, discovering Wollaton Park at eighteen was a catalyst for growing to love Nottingham as a whole, and hoping to better it as a place. 

In 2026 there’s also lots of opportunities for us to get involved in caring for our urban greenery. The Friends of Wollaton Park, for instance, continue to look for volunteers to help with conservation tasks – like restoring the walled garden, fencing maintenance, pathway clearing, and lake-work – it costs just £5 a year to join them.

Just a stone’s throw away, in Wollaton itself, the Friends of Wollaton Nature Reserves take care of Martin’s Pond, Harrison’s Plantation, and Raleigh Pond. In 1976, they were jointly recognised as Nottingham’s first local nature reserve. It’s a beautiful location, with rich, earthy scents, sprawling pathways, thick stretches of trees, and peaceful bodies of water – if you visit and think the same, why not help keep it as nice as it is? 

Both of these groups are part of the Nottingham Green Guardians: a city council-run volunteer program that looks after many other city centre adjacent spaces – like St Anne’s Allotments and Colwick Woods. 

There are however lots of independent initiatives looking after spaces that are further afield too. In Strelley, locals Rachel Gravett and Keith Harrison are facilitating community planting at beloved local space ‘The Field’. They will restart their weekly volunteer rewilding sessions when the weather gets warmer. Also in 2025 the Sherwood People’s Forest, run by locals Sarah Manton and Ezekiel Bone, and assisted by LeftLion environment editor and sustainability polymath Adam Pickering, were hard at work with community planting, and likely have more (as of yet unannounced) plans for 2026. 

But aside from volunteering, we can also just spread love and appreciation for green space in Nottingham, and campaign to keep it as free as possible for public enjoyment. 

As plans slowly materialize for possible further ‘re-greening’ in parts of Broad Marsh surrounding the Green Heart, it’s definitely worth keeping love for our local parks high, and rejecting attempts to use them in less than ideal ways.