Dealing with Hard Surfaces to make Nature-based Solution Eco-gardens

The Connecting Nature partnership includes three cities that are leading the way in terms of developing and implementing a Framework for city-wide nature-based solution delivery: Genk (Belgium), Glasgow (Scotland), and Poznań (Poland). Of these cities, Poznań’s ambition is to supplement their existing ‘green wedge’ urban design by implementing a series of nature-based solution eco-gardens. The gardens will be designed to act as stepping-stones, providing connectivity between the existing green wedges, providing more equitable distribution of greenspace, and providing opportunities for experiencing and learning about nature. In collaboration with local kindergartens, the City of Poznań have already begun the roll-out of these gardens. Nature-based solution design principles are being used to convert grey spaces within the kindergartens into eco-gardens for the pupils and social gardens that provide accessibility for local communities. A key challenge in relation to out-scaling this initiative across the city is the high expense of demolishing and disposing of the hard surfaces that need to be removed in order to create the nature- based solution eco-gardens. Based on the experiences of the City of Poznań Connecting Nature team, this cost can take up most of the budget for the re-design. In order to help reduce/remove this barrier to delivery, a review how other projects globally have addressed this barrier was carried out.

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