🤗 In May 2026 we held our Building with Nature event where we asked the question "What if our buildings and the places in-between made space for nature? 🪴

💚 We heard about the huge range of skills and interest around green infrastructure in urban streets and sites, and the need to do this at pace in order to support human health, bring back biodiversity, enhance community wellbeing and enable businesses to thrive. Our speakers all brought their wealth of experience to inspire us.

We are grateful to our sponsors who helped this event to happen: Soutampton National Park City, RSA Southampton, Savills Urban Design Studio, Go! Southampton with support from Future Towns Innovation Hub and University of Southampton's Social Enterprise and Social Impact Lab. Plus all the other people involved in organising this.

🎬We made a film about the event (see above) and wrote a report based on all the feedback that people gave about what was important. The themes that emerged are as follows: * Thriving green spaces for people and nature. * Turn grey to green. * Rethink building approaches. * Ways to ensure long term success. Principles that are important to people throughout everything is community co-design and engagement, learning together and developing flagship projects in Southampton.

Since this event, we have secured some funding from Natural England to progress a pilot project. This will help us further develop partnerships and community involvement around Building with Nature themes. In the Autumn 2026 we will run some events to bring people together, do some planting activities and learn about nature and opportunities for biodiversity to flourish in Southampton. 

💡 We are keen to hear about sites and streets in Southampton where greening could take place, from small scale temporary interventions, window boxes, planters, to larger long term infrastructure improvements that could bring in trees, plants, green roofs, rain gardens, courtyards and nature-friendly pocket parks.

Sign up for occasional email updates on how to get involved please sign up here.

🔉 Come and chat with Rebecca and others at one of these informal get togethers:

☕ Southampton Climate Action Network (SoCAN) autumn gathering at Sholing Valley Study Centre, 1 October 2026 5-7pm. No need to book, more details are here.

How would you like to get involved in Building with Nature? What’s important to you? What do you need to help bring more nature into buildings and urban spaces? 🌳

To find out more, contact rebecca @ socollective.org.uk