Festive Fun that doesn’t cost the Earth

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Festive Fun that doesn’t cost the Earth. Christmas doesn’t have to be a costly burden, with a little effort and imagination we can have a waste free festive season, save money and protect the planet for future generations. Read more

Dogs and Wolves

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Dogs and Wolves: Saving nature in Lewes where dogs are behaving like wolves!  In Lewes, dogs are on a mission to help the environment, and they’re doing it by acting like wolves! A long time ago, before wolves disappeared from the UK in the 1760s, they travelled across large areas every night, sometimes covering over 20 km. While they roamed, their fur collected seeds from wildflowers and grasses, which would later fall off and grow into new plants, spreading nature far and wide. Read more

How Affordable are Affordable Homes?

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How Affordable are Affordable Homes? We’ve heard a lot recently about housebuilding. Horsham District Council’s new Local Plan is now with the Government appointed inspector. Meanwhile, central government is promising to double the number of new homes built each year, which could potentially mean a lot more building in our District Read more

A group of people displaying a pollination education station otherwise known as a luxury bug hotel

Preparing for Spring: Flowering Food for our Hungry Pollinators!

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A group of people displaying a pollination education station otherwise known as a luxury bug hotelPreparing for Spring: Flowering Food for our Hungry Pollinators!  As we head towards autumn, it’s time to think about spring planting and preparing our outside spaces and Pollination Education Stations (PES) for the coming year to give our pollinators the best chance of survival during the winter and provide them with rich, nutritious food sources when they emerge next year.

First, we must ensure these vital creatures have safe places to overwinter. These pollinators are essential for our survival, helping to pollinate one-third of the food we eat. That’s where our PES trail comes in, providing crucial havens across Sussex. This year, we’ve been busy installing these stations with the help of local businesses, parish councils, schools, and housebuilders. Read more

Ducks on a sunny day enjoying the grass aroun a pond

Enjoying Ducks and Protecting Ponds

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Enjoying ducks and protecting ponds: Horsham Town has two new family-friendly Wildways Trails thanks to Horsham Green Spaces, and these are a wonderful way to explore nature, with both routes beginning and ending at picturesque ponds. Ponds are often home to ducks, and we are fortunate to have a newly restored, wildlife-friendly pond in Horsham […]

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Worthing’s New Heat Network brings in the Community

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Worthing’s new heat network brings in the community.  Can we really find ways to ensure that everyone gets a benefit from Net Zero? Not just by doing the right thing, or far in the future, but here, now, in terms of tangible things like jobs and lower costs? According to Charlotte Owen, yes, we can. […]

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Partnering for a Greener Future

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Partnering for a Greener Future: At SGL we’re thrilled to be partnering with Greenwood, which is a great example of how a company can become ‘greener’.

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Country Ways

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Country Ways: Val volunteers with Transition Horsham which runs the community allotment. She has decades of experience, as since childhood, she worked alongside her father on his allotment.
When she married, she and her husband grew everything: cabbages, turnips,
swedes, cauliflower, runner beans, potatoes, radishes, gherkins, onions…and nothing was wasted. Even the swede and turnip leaf greens were a healthy part of their meals.
Their early home had been derelict, condemned and unmortgageable and it took them many years to demolish and rebuild; everything was a hard slog. At one point a whole bay window fell out, and when it rained the water came up through the floor, so sometimes they ate dinner with friends in the upstairs bedroom! It was definitely a time of ‘Make do and mend’. Read more

Children in brightly coloured cothes and hand-made animal costumes, reciting a play in the forest with their teacher, looked on by their parents

Animal Friends

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Animal Friends: On Monday this week, I attended a wonderful open-air theatre performance in a hornbeam circle in a private woodland.
  The tree circle to create the ‘stage’ had been planted many years previously and the play wasn’t unique only in its setting- it had been crafted by the young children who performed it. They designed and produced the whole play, including recording the soundtrack. Read more

A group of volunteers on a sunny day installing a bug hotel made from pre-loved pallets in a new housing development

Horsham’s Future: Sustainable Developments

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Horsham’s Future: Sustainable Developments.  Although we have had a change of government and Horsham has a Liberal-Democrat MP instead of a Conservative representative, the pressure to build new houses in our local area is not going to change.

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a rainbow arcing across the sky at dusk over lush treesMorag Warrack

Rainbows and Hope

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Rainbows and Hope.  Rainbows have always been a symbol of hope, and I took this photograph at the weekend, just after my friend had said, “It’s impossible to take a good photograph of a rainbow.”

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Without Nature We Are Nothing

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Without nature we are nothing. With that in mind, Sussex Green Living, Horsham Eco Churches and their supporters joined more than 60,000 people, representing 350 environmental groups on the Restore Nature Now march (led by Chris Packham) from Park Lane to Parliament Square in London on June 22.  It was a well organised family event, with amazing costumes, music, banners and speeches, chants led by children and echoed by adults.  Carrie Cort, CEO Sussex Green Living, said it was her first attendance at an event like that in London, she found it inspiring, empowering and motivating. She felt very honoured to walk with so many others and met people who had travelled from as far afield as Aberdeen, Abergavenny and the Lake District to join the march. Read more

Vote Wisely for the Planet

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Vote Wisely for the Planet.  Sussex Green Living recently hosted the launch of Horsham MP Watch at the Sussex Green Hub. Pat Smith from Dorking introduced MP Watch to explain the nationwide service it provides for all residents.

The idea is that amongst all the spin, information, misinformation, and media stories, the conflicting reports can to some extent be unravelled and facts presented more clearly to inform people about what government advisors are saying, what candidates are saying, what they are doing, and what the MPs are actually voting for (or against).

MP Watch aims to provide unbiased information about MPs across all parties, so voters can be better informed.

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Confessions of a Reformed Lawn Addict

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Confessions of a reformed Lawn Addict.  Oh, the swelling ambition with which I greeted my first lawn! (it was tiny). How I would nurture it!  Feed it. Weed it, ruthlessly. Mow it close, until its stripes looked like the No 1 Court at Wimbledon.

Reality was very different. Inconvenient patches of muddy brown forever reappeared, worsening as my mower’s wheels tore into the damp sward. Which remained stubbornly uneven and tufty. Meanwhile, pesky “weeds” as I called them, just kept coming back. Not only had I committed myself to a futile task, I was looking in the wrong direction altogether. Was it all worth it? Read more

Front cover of Bill Bryson novel, The Road to Little Dribbling

A Small Island

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A Small Island.  I’m currently reading one of Bill Bryson’s funny books and he beautifully describes a little-known area near Heathrow airport which has somehow escaped development. The Staines Moor pocket of land has been untouched for over a thousand years and is the only green space for miles that Staines residents can enjoy. Heathrow has two runways and plans for a third are afoot. It’s already a most polluting airport, second only to Dubai in the world. I mention this because consultations are now well underway for Gatwick to become the same size.  It’s privately owned by Black Rock and Vinci, who also own airports in France and Portugal.  Their desire is to match Heathrow’s income by creating a new runway in place of its existing emergency one. Read more

Horsham Cloth Nappy Library: Changing Nappies Changing Lives

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Horsham Cloth Nappy Library: Changing Nappies Changing Lives

We’re Lucy and Sarah, local mums who loved cloth nappies for our babies so much that we’re now running the Horsham Cloth Nappy Library to support other families! As one of our favourite nappy retailers says, “You can change the world, – one nappy change at a time.”

Most people now recognise the damage single use plastics cause, and we’re making changes.  Let’s now extend our thinking to other single-use products! Read more

Sussex Green Living’s new Pollination Education Station initiative

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Sussex Green Living’s new Pollination Education Station initiative!  We are proud to announce the launch of our latest initiative, the Pollination Education Station and we are now calling on businesses, pubs, councils, schools, groups, and individuals across West Sussex to get involved.

The PollinA pollination education station outside the corporate offices of a business with educational plaque ation Education Station initiative is a response to the urgent need to address the declining population of pollinators in Britain, which are vital for food production and maintaining ecosystems.

A Pollination Education Station is an eco-luxury destination for essential winged friends, such as solitary bees and butterflies. Each station is a purpose-built structure made from repurposed materials and provides a safe haven for pollinators to shelter, breed, and rest during their vital pollination missions. Each station comes with an educational plaque, creating awareness about the vital role of pollinators and offering suggestions for personal action. Plus a wooden ‘sponsored by’ sign.  Read more

Community Composting Revolution

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Community Composting Revolution

Nicky Scott, otherwise known as Mr Compost, is based in Devon and for many years has been the driving force in Community Composting across the county. This is his story.

When I started a very small community composting project on our allotments in Chagford, on Dartmoor, I had no idea how it was going to grow.  Initially, I was frustrated, firstly by people on our allotments having choking bonfires all the time. The smoke would roll down the hill and invade our house; not ideal when you have babies asleep inside.

Secondly, in those days we had ‘bulky household skips’ brought to our car park every month, for people to dispose of stuff the refuse collection couldn’t take. I soon realised a huge amount of garden clippings, hedge prunings, woody waste, grass cuttings and so on was being dumped so I called Devon County Council to suggest that they dedicate a skip just for garden stuff to stop it going to landfill and then we could use it on the allotments. To my enormous surprise they thought it was a great idea! Read more

Transition Horsham’s Annual Seed Swap

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Transition Horsham’s Annual Seed Swap 

It’s spring!  Well, nearly …we have some snowdrops out and it’s just glorious to see them.  It is at least the promise that spring is on the way, and it’s not just us humans who appreciate the flowers-the insects also appreciate the life-giving nectar in these early blossoms.

If you’re a gardener, you’ll be thinking of what seeds you’ll plant this year too, and Sussex Green Hub’s next meeting on 24th February can help you with that, as Transition Horsham will be hosting their annual Seed Swap. Read more

Keep Lancing Lovely – Ten Years Cleaning Sussex Beaches

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Keep Lancing Lovely – Ten Years Cleaning Sussex Beaches. Down here on the coast, we’re lucky to have organisations like Keep Lancing Lovely: a tireless network of volunteers who clear the beaches of all sorts of mess and rubbish, enjoying themselves and keeping fit while they do it, as we found on the sunny Tuesday morning we spent with Wendy Peters, Graham, Rosina and Angela, the KLL team who were combing the shingles of Lancing beach for wood, glass, cigarette butts, vapes and  plastic litter of all sizes.

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