Your donations make an enormous difference at Roots and Shoots, going towards our environmental education programmes and further developing our green spaces. We fundraise for projects which directly improve our site for nature, for education and our community, expanding our offering to as many Londoners as possible.
If you would like to help support any of the initiatives below, please make a donation.
The Paradise Garden
A new Garden and Learning Space at Roots and Shoots
The Wild Garden at Roots and Shoots is at the heart of environmental education for all, a place for people to come together, and a home for urban wildlife. In 2025, it's time for the final undeveloped quarter of the garden to be transformed, and we hope you will help us do it!
We plan to create a beautiful new biodiverse-sensory garden for environmental education. The garden will feature a planted pergola and a good-sized outdoor learning space for activities, alongside large flowerbeds, trees and sculpture. The learning space will be used for nature sessions with primary schools and nurseries, the School Links programme and for community events, enabling us to deliver vital environmental education to Londoners of all ages.
This area has always been tricky - our Wild Garden is built on the demolished remains of a WW2 Meccano factory, and in the final quarter much of the concrete footings of the factory remain, and are too costly to remove. It is an open area which gets a lot of sun, and with very little soil to retain moisture it makes for harsh planting conditions. Luckily we are used to gardening against the odds, and so we have taken inspiration from drought-tolerant gardens from around the UK to design a gravel garden filled with plants which will thrive in this area, using practical and recycled materials to create flowerbeds and new habitats for wildlife.
We plan to begin transforming the area in Spring 2025, but we can only complete the project with your kind donations, which will go towards plants, materials and construction.
Make a donation towards this projectNature Sessions for Primary Schools and Nurseries
Since the 1990s, Roots and Shoots delivered environmental education to local primary school groups, providing inner-city children with the opportunity to experience nature up-close. Due to the pandemic and an end in funding we sadly had to halt this vital programme in 2020.
In 2023, we began trialling a new environmental education programme, organising adhoc nature sessions with local schools who visited our site to learn about ecosystems, flora and fauna, getting up-close with creatures in our pond and pollinators across the gardens. The sessions were extremely popular with both the schoolchildren and their teachers alike, and we are now fundraising to bring the programme back more permanently alongside a new purpose-built educational space in the Wild Garden.
We are fundraising to deliver sessions in 2025's summer term. Sessions will be delivered outside in our beautiful Wild Garden, and are focused on engaging directly with nature, with activities such as pond dipping and a wildlife hunt.
Make a donation towards this project