Biodiversity, it’s a term that increasingly appears in strategies, campaigns and conversations across the industry and in everyday life too. But what does this actually mean to us as a business and to you as an individual?
Put simply, biodiversity is known as the diversity of all life on earth, including all the plants, animals and microorganisms that make up an ecosystem. These ecosystems quietly provide us with essential services that we rely on, from clean air and water, pollination for crops and garden plants, natural flood protection and spaces that support our health and wellbeing as well as habitats for wildlife.
In short, when nature thrives, so do people.
As homebuilders, the places we design have a lasting impact on the environment and the communities who live there. That’s why we believe biodiversity and nature should be considered from the very beginning of the design process, helping us create developments that are greener, healthier and better connected to nature.
What is the housebuilding industry doing to promote biodiversity?
Across England, new legislation is helping to protect and restore nature. One of the most significant changes that you may have heard about is Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG). BNG requires new developments to leave nature in a measurably better state than before, delivering at least 10% improvement in biodiversity. These improvements can be both on or offsite and must be measured, verified and monitored for 30-years to ensure long term impact and value. This means across new developments you will likely start to notice more nature and a wider variety of habitats such as wildflower meadows, log piles and hedgerows.
Alongside this, the housebuilding industry has introduced initiatives such as the Future Homes Hub’s ‘Homes for Nature’ commitment, which encourages developers to integrate wildlife-friendly features into new homes and neighbourhoods.
At Strata, we’ve signed up to the Homes for Nature commitment - but we want to go further.
Strata’s Approach to Nature
Strata’s Biodiversity & Nature Policy sets out how we will protect, enhance and celebrate nature across our developments.
This sits alongside our Sustainability Strategy and reinforces our ambition to create healthy, inclusive and resilient communities, where people feel connected to the natural environment around them.
Through this policy, Strata are committing to:
- Designing developments that incorporate biodiverse landscapes and wildlife features from the outset
- Creating green spaces that support both nature and community wellbeing
- Enhancing existing wildlife corridors and habitats
- Ensuring landscapes are managed in ways that allow nature to flourish
- Helping our customers, colleagues and partners connect with nature
To bring our Biodiversity & Nature Policy to life, we’ve introduced a Biodiversity Checklist alongside new design specifications and processes that help ensure nature is considered throughout the design and delivery of our developments.
This means we’re taking a consistent approach to:
- Creating space for nature, including wildflower areas and wildlife-friendly green spaces
- Planting the right species, prioritising native trees and pollinator-friendly planting
- Supporting wildlife, with features such as hedgehog highways, bird and bat boxes
- Managing landscapes differently, allowing habitats like wildflower meadows to flourish
- Using nature to build resilience, including sustainable drainage and nature-based flood solutions
These measures help ensure that our developments are designed not only for people, but for the wildlife and ecosystems that share these spaces with us.
How you can make an impact to biodiversity
Creating nature-friendly places isn’t something we can do alone, it works best when everyone plays a part. So, here’s a few things you can do to get involved and to promote biodiversity and nature too:
Join one of our community nature events: Kicking off this spring, we’ll be hosting a series of nature themed events across our developments which will be open to our customers, the wider community and our team members too.
Plant pollinator friendly flowers: Pollinator-friendly planting helps to support bees, butterflies and other insects. Some options include:
- Lavander
- Fuchsia
- Mahonia
- Allium
- Geranium
- Rudbeckia
Let nature into your garden: Creating a ‘hedgehog highway’, like the ones you see on Strata developments, allows hedgehogs to pass through your gardens through the night on their search for food and a mate. Hedgehogs are native to the UK but experienced severe decline, so these highways help to sustain the population and help them to thrive.
Install habitats for other species: This could be bird and bat boxes, bee houses and insect hotels, which don’t just support wildlife, but can be a great family activity to make and monitor too.
Avoid using pesticides and weed killer: These are harmful to local wildlife, so avoiding these is a great way to keep your garden wildlife friendly.
Looking Ahead
Nature is an essential part of creating places where people feel happy, healthy and connected to their surroundings.
Through our Biodiversity & Nature Policy, the Homes for Nature commitment and the actions outlined in our Biodiversity Checklist, we’re taking important steps towards creating developments where nature and communities can thrive together.
And this is just the beginning.