Greater Anglia works to convert its land to gardens
Their station gardens now cover an area the size of a premier league football pitch
Greater Anglia’s dedicated more of its land to gardens, revealing the amount of land dedicated to them grew by 8% last year compared to 2021.
There are 61 station gardens on the operator’s network, which together now cover an area of more than 7,400 square metres – about the size of a premier league football pitch.
In 2022, volunteers created new areas of garden at Alresford, Battlesbridge, Cressing, Dullingham, Great Yarmouth, Haddiscoe, Ingatestone, Lingwood, March, Rayleigh, Sheringham, St Margaret’s, Stowmarket, Weeley, and Westerfield.
The train company says each garden is intended to provide a habitat for local wildlife and food for pollinators.
It also says the gardens are intended to make the stations more attractive and welcoming, contributing to human wellbeing too.
Volunteers also cared for flower planters on platforms, hanging baskets and window boxes at stations across Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire and installed bee refuges, insect houses and bird boxes.
Greater Anglia’s Customer and Community Engagement Manager, Alan Neville, said, “Thanks to the care and attention of our team of station adopters, we have thousands upon thousands of plants thriving at our rail stations which helps not only to make them more welcoming, but are benefiting the environment too.
“Many of these gardens have been designed to be wildlife friendly, enhancing biodiversity and providing food, shelter and breeding places for many different types of wildlife, helping to improve the local environment and helping our stations to exist more harmoniously with their rural surroundings.”
All of Greater Anglia’s station gardens are pledged to the WildEast movement, which aims to return 20% of the region back to nature by 2050 to help reverse the shocking decline in the area’s native wildlife which is suffering badly from habitat loss.