The John Muir Award is a UK wide environmental award scheme. It encourages people to connect with, enjoy and care for wild places. I am offering a group of young people age 13- 17 the opportunity to join me on a journey to connect with nature more deeply, learn more about it, and conserve and increase the biodiversity.
We will be based on the beautiful biodynamic organic land, owned by the company Weleda, near Ilkeston. The land has areas of mixed woodland with spring and summer wild flower meadows, as well as areas where plants are grown commercially for their healing and medicinal properties.
We will have a chance to explore the land across the different seasons, and learn about the woods and wild flower meadows, and the plants and animals that live there. Activities will be based on the interests of the group but could include identifying butterflies through a butterfly transect; surveying the site for pollinators; tree identification and tree health surveys; biodiversity surveys, and bee and wild flower identification.
We will be exploring how we can take practical action to improve and enhance the biodiversity through activities such as habitat creation, woodland management, seed collecting, growing plants for wildlife and tree planting.
Participants will be encouraged and supported to take the ideas and learning from the sessions back to their own communities and share it.
We will be meeting one Saturday a month, over 9 months, starting in May 2021, from 10.00am until 2.00pm.
The cost of each session is £15 for the first young person, and £10 for siblings, paid in blocks of 3 sessions in advance. The date for the first 3 sessions are: 15th May, 12th June and 17th July 2021.
You can find out more about the Award at www.johnmuirtrust.org
Please contact me at Lauren@intothewildwood.co.uk to express your interest.