© Connor Meadows
Green Shoots
An innovative restoration project with young people leading the way
Green Shoots is the neighbouring site to Grow Wilder, our urban nature reserve and food growing hub, and is the location for an exciting collaborative restoration project, led by local young people.
In 2024, with support from the National Lottery Community Fund, Avon Wildlife Trust partnered with Action for Conservation on the Intergenerational Action for Climate and Nature project to take on this exciting initiative.
© Connor Meadows
Youth Leadership Group
Our Youth Leadership Group (YLG) are 14 young people, recruited in 2024, to create and design a plan to bring the 5-acre site back to life in a way that helps restore it for the local community and for nature.
Over the next 3 years, the YLG will use a process of eco-cultural mapping – plotting out the changes to the site across the past, the present and the future – to imagine a new purpose for this unloved patch of brownfield land.
Project timeline
The early stages
As part of our initial pilot project, the first group of young people began the eco-cultural mapping process, looking at the brownfield site’s history.
Through talking to members of the community, visits to Bristol archives, discussions with ecologists and Avon Wildlife Trust staff, they were able to explore the site’s past all the way back to the Norman invasion of 1066. Across 4 maps, they showed the changes the land has experienced through the claiming of land for private estates, a wartime push for allotments and homegrown food supplies, up to the construction of the M32 motorway in the 1960s.
The young people put themselves in the shoes of people who used the land over this time – mostly farmers of common land and then allotment growers – and of the nature that will have called the space home – species like wild boar, bears and maybe even wolves.
© Connor Meadows
© Connor Meadows
© Connor Meadows
October 2024
After securing funding from the National Lottery Community Fund, the Intergenerational Action for Climate and Nature kicked off in October 2024 with the first meeting of our Youth Leadership Group (YLG).
The group spent the visit exploring the site, reconnecting with the stories uncovered in the past mapping process by trying out some medieval crafts, such as willow weaving, and getting to know each other. It was a brilliant day to kick off the three-year project and to meet the fantastic young people that will be young leaders for the site.
Read more about our YLG’s first meeting from our Youth Officer, Connor
Youth Leadership Group to transform new nature site
November 2024
The Youth Leadership explored historical changes to how people experienced and related to the land, through local stories of land theft and banishment. They focused on the impacts of land privatisation, de-peopling, status, power and who really holds the rights to land and nature.
December 2024
Our December meeting looked at the role the site has played in the local community over time – through it’s use as an allotment for food-growing during the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign through the Second World War – and how communities were impacted by the construction of the M32 motorway (once described as a ‘dagger though the heart of Bristol’).
The Youth Leadership Group also made their first changes to the site, constructing a new accessible pathway onto the site, to ensure more people will be able to use the space when it is opened for events.
© Connor Meadows
January 2025
The new accessible path created by the Youth Leadership Group was joined to the footpath with the installation of a new gate.
© Connor Meadows
February 2025
The Youth Leadership Group began to create a map of place names, giving titles to distinctive landmarks and features of the site to help connect to the landscape and chart the changes over time!
March 2025: Community Day 1!
The new nature site at Grow Wilder was opened to the public for the very first time. Our Youth Leadership Group hosted the first Community Open Day of the project, inviting people in for tours of the site, wildlife spotting, community art, and of course a cup of tea and cake!
Some of the YLG shared their experience in a blog post
(C) Laura Kravac
We also recruited our first group of monitoring volunteers to help discover which species of wildlife call the site home – so we can know what is using the site, which areas to protect and which ones we can improve for nature!
April 2025
The first Exchange visit of the project saw the Youth Leadership Groups from Grow Wilder, the Penpont Project and Heartwood Social Farm come together for a knowledge-sharing day at Grow Wilder.
Our YLG shared their experiences of the mapping process so far, gave tours of the restoration site and got the other young people stuck into creating a new gathering space for groups to use when visiting the site. Everyone attended also decorated a rock to create a community cairn to commemorate the collaboration between our three projects.
Read what the Youth Leadership Group thought of their first Exchange visit
Exchanging ideas: Intergenerational Action for Climate & Nature project
May 2025
The Youth Leadership Group carried out soil surveying, looking at the nutrient contents of the soil on site and collecting samples to create natural pigments.
© Connor Meadows
These pigments were used to begin the creation of the present map – a map showing the state of the site and it’s wildlife currently.
© Connor Meadows
Also this month, the monitoring volunteers recorded slow worms on the site for the first time!
June 2025 – Community Day 2!
The Youth Leadership Group hosted the second Community Day at the site as part of the Festival of Nature, bringing people together to create experimental portable mini-habitats on the site, including a bee bank and a pond! They also got visitors stuck into some crafts, including felting, and some wildlife monitoring.
July 2025
The Youth Leadership Group headed away from Grow Wilder for an inspiration visit to Heal Somerset - a new, large-scale rewilding site just outside the village of Witham Friary. The trip helped to inspire the group to think about what changes could be made to rewild our site and bring nature back. The weekend was spent bird watching, moth trapping, campfire cooking, crafting and checking out the work of the site’s resident beavers!
© Connor Meadows
© Connor Meadows
The official naming of the nature site
August 2025
After several months of discussion and debate, the Youth Leadership Group decided on a new name for the nature site they are restoring… Green Shoots!
This name was chosen as it suggests new life and hope for the future, capturing the site’s role as a place for people and nature to grow and thrive together.
The Youth Leadership Group also set some mammal footprint tunnels, hoping to find evidence of creatures using Green Shoots after dark – and checking them later, they found the first ever proof of hedgehogs on site!
© Connor Meadows
September 2025 - Wildlife monitoring
After finding footprints last month, the Youth Leadership Group set out to get some footage of hedgehogs on Green Shoots by setting camera traps to spot them overnight – and they got some wonderful photos!
© Connor Meadows
September 2025 - site clearance
The group also started to clear some of the brambles that take up a lot of the site, to clear access to some old, dilapidated farm buildings in preparation for their eventual demolition.
October 2025: Mapping the present
The Youth Leadership Group brought together members of Avon Wildlife Trust staff, and community members to collect knowledge about Green Shoots and its wildlife and start creating their ‘present’ map – a map showing what the site currently looks like, is used for and which wildlife is found on site.
This will be used over the next few months to inform a future vision for the site as a better place for nature!
© Connor Meadows
Contact
For more information about Green Shoots at Grow Wilder, please contact our Youth Officer, Connor
Acknowledgements
Thanks to National Lottery players and support from The National Lottery Community Fund, Green Shoots at Grow Wilder is part of the Intergenerational Action for Climate and Nature initiative, helping young people restore 650 acres of land across England and Wales.
