Rewilding Dundee

The University of Dundee Botanic Garden launched its 'Rewilding Dundee' project in March 2021, designed to build upon the nascent urban nature reserve movement one garden and its postcode at a time. The objective is to map our progress across the city in the coming months and years as we join up the dots to make a space for nearby nature wherever we live.

This work is part of many other projects that have previously been undertaken in and around Dundee – it is after all the greenest city in Scotland already.

The inspiration of this private garden movement is the small project initiated by Russ Avery who launched his own rewilding project with his neighbours on the three streets that form the avenues where he lives. He designed the logo we share in common to help others coordinate their work under the umbrella of the 'rewilding' logo. The spirit of placemaking from the grassroots is something we are pleased to be able to support as we help Dundonians celebrate the collective benefit of their projects – whether it be a windowsill or a front garden.

The project aims are simple, to help you share your commitment to wildlife-friendly gardening in the space you have available and map it in a way that shows how our landscape can be joined up to better work for wildlife as an interconnected urban nature reserve. The Tayside Biodiversity Booklet is a must-read when starting on your wildlife-friendly garden journey. It can help inform your efforts and ensure they are aligned with everyone else's - further information is available in the booklet to help you explore this wonderful area of gardening in the local and regional context.

In return for sharing your postcode (or first three numbers and letter combination), we will map your space as a dot on a map we intend to help join up across the city and colour the map green.

We will also support you with your ideas, show what is being done by others and create new posts from the botanic garden to help everyone make the change.

The Dundee Botanic Garden will provide information on wildlife gardening choices on our website and through our events advertised or shared via our Facebook page. The project seeks to build capacity and help connect our communities with their nearby nature in a fun, engaging and active way. The Botanic Garden seeks to achieve this through organising walks, talks, and hosting active workshops throughout the year at the Botanic Garden. It will also host regular events across the city via the four Wee Forest project sites it has established at the local boroughs of Douglas, Kirton, Maryfield and Lochee. This work is also helping to build community capacity in advance and throughout a joint University of Dundee and Dundee City Council Project that will establish a citizen observatory across the city with many more engaged partners and public and private landowners. The intention is to help transform Dundee’s former industrial grey hard landscape by identifying and making space for Nature-based Solutions which include trees, sustainable urban drainage systems, green roofs and living walls and meadows across the city landscape. Bringing green and blue solutions as local solutions to help mitigate and adapt to climate change while proving space for people and nature. If you would like to learn more about this partnership please follow the pan European Urban ReLeaf project and look to sign up to learn more or get involved as it looks to recruit engaged local interest in citizen research here.

The hope is together we can join up the dots and make Dundee the most biodiverse city in Scotland by working together to make a difference.

To get involved is simple - commit by sharing your postcode (the first part is ok too).

For those of you living outside of Dundee Russ is willing to adapt the logo so your group can help support nearby nature in your town.