Member Article

Your Royal Park Needs You

The Royal Parks is offering a new opportunity to get London’s workforce out into the fresh air and help care for 5,000 acres of green space in our capital city

As a new report* highlights that spending time in a natural environment helps mental health and wellbeing , companies are being given the opportunity to not only help boost team morale but also give something back to London’s parklands through Park Days.

The initiative offers a range of enriching activities for businesses to choose from, allowing teams to forge stronger relationships and develop practical problem solving skills, while immersing themselves in the natural world.

From planting wildflowers in The Regent’s Park to traditional mowing of meadows with shire horses in Kensington Gardens, businesses can commit to a single day or a whole year of activity for between five and 50 employees. Volunteers will be rewarded with a huge sense of achievement after a day out in an inspirational setting.

It costs £36m to keep the Royal Parks beautiful and bursting with life for the 77million visitors they receive each year. Having worked with corporate volunteers for many years, The Royal Parks now wants to open up the opportunity to more businesses, to help raise vital funds and build support on a wider scale. The Royal Parks rely on the valuable time and energy devoted by teams of volunteers to make improvements to the parks that might otherwise not happen.

Tim Axe, Commercial Director at Benugo which is already enrolled on the scheme, comments: “The chance to get our hands dirty in the outdoors was a real treat, and a really rewarding experience for the whole team. We’ve sponsored a whole zone, so we’ve had the opportunity to send multiple groups down to the area to help clear and plant it over several days so far this year.

“To get out of our everyday roles and work together has been a huge collaborative effort and is already a source of immense pride. Giving back to an organisation as prestigious, and yet as accessible to all, as the Royal Parks is a wonderful opportunity – that’s what makes it so meaningful to us.”

Clare Bowen, Head of Programmes for The Royal Parks said: “We really value the contribution in restoring and maintaining London’s Royal Parks. Our corporate groups always bring a huge injection of energy into every task they tackle in the park. The groups are naturally competitive and their triumphant team photos showing off the impact they’ve had at the end of the day make it all worthwhile.

“It’s clearly a benefit for the parks which rely on this enthusiastic manpower, and also a benefit for the teams which work together to achieve great things in the local environment. Many volunteers come back year after year, and even bring their families to the park to show off the wildflowers they planted or the bench they restored.”

*Research taken from Natural England’s ‘review of nature-based interventions for mental health care’: http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/4513819616346112

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sandra Griffiths .