"With communication and collaboration, individuals, community groups, public agencies and businesses could help nature thrive across the city by connecting and enriching existing green spaces."

That's the idea that emerged from the conversation on our recent netwalk for changemakers: "What if Edinburgh was designed for wildlife as well as people?"

What’s already working?

Walking on the Meadows, we started by sharing examples of good nature conversation projects in the city, including the Square Meters for Butterflies Project, bee hives on the roof of Lyceum Theatre and some sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) like Climate Ready Craigleith.

We were also intrigued by a number of private “wildlife” gardens in the area – that judging by the uniform signage are part of a coordinated scheme.

And while it’s not a nature conservation project, we loved by the vision and perservance (over 19 years) of an initial handful of individuals to transform a traffic island and surrounding streets into a “greener, safer and more welcoming place for residents and visitors” will now be realised with a £1.86m investment from the Visitor Levy.

What can we imagine?

We then imagined what might be possible if funding and politics weren’t a barrier.

Inspired specifically by the Square Metre for Butterflies Project, we imagined a whole range of actions to connect new and existing green and nature rich spaces across Edinburgh.

We envisioned people and organisations involved in all kinds of projects collaborating and learning from each other to enhance ‘their’ green spaces, while also coordinating activities to grow a network of air, land and water corridors to encourage species to spread, thrive and enrich the city.

Who are we to have ideas?

While we have personal and professional experience of, and expertise in, some of the issues and projects we discussed, we were very aware that there’s so much going on that we don’t know about.

And we’re conscious that some of our ideas may be already be happening or be ecologically ignorant – planting gardens to encourage bat corridors perhaps?

The point though, is that a handful of interested people are excited by the idea of a more biodiversity rich city and quickly came up with ideas to help make progress that seem worth exploring.

So what next?

We excited about continuing the conversation, especially with more people involved with green spaces and nature conservation, including local parks' “friends of” groups, citizen scientists, community gardeners, as well as officers working with public agencies and environmental NGOs.

The aim will not be to re-run the conversation, but to open it up and explore what might be possible.

Join our final netwalk of the the year: