Sustainable Overton: the future looks green!

Sustainable Overton is made up of an ever-growing group of local people ranging from villagers with highly specialist skills such as engineers, environmental and biodiversity specialists, through to teachers, farmers, parish councillors, stay-at-home parents, and simply PWC (People Who Care).

 

Over the last three years, the Environment team has been implementing a variety of initiatives to enhance the green spaces around the village. Whether its enhancing biodiversity or establishing important wildlife corridors (linking from one environment to another allowing wildlife to move freely and safely between them), the team of volunteers work all year round to ensure it is doing what it can to protect and enhance the natural environment.

 

What’s happening on the hill

Overton Hill is a large housing development and is fortunate to have a beautiful and diverse green open space running right through the middle. From the community orchard, you can take the public path up to the upper meadows and beyond into a wonderful network of walks surrounding the village. The Overton Hill green space is public space, owned and managed by Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council. The Environment Team have been working the BDBC Green Team to help shape plans of how we restore and enhance the area’s biodiversity not only to support wildlife, but also provide villagers and visitors a beautiful space to explore, especially the wide variety of native wildflower species. We now have a newly established Overton Hill Conservation Group that is officially recognised and supported by BDBC and gives more independence for the team to work on local initiatives.

The team also works with Natural Basingstoke, which supports and represents the many local community nature conservation groups in the borough providing training, equipment, development skills and management resources to maximise the biodiversity value of our public green spaces.

 

Hands on approach

The Overton Hill Conservation Group volunteers are a busy bunch! Over the last few months they have cleared huge areas of dense thicket to ensure young trees survive and thrive. These areas are also home for many nesting birds. By clearing the dense thicket before nesting, it provides space and protection throughout the season. The team also planted one thousand bulbs in December, providing a food source for early pollinators and also sowed some Yellow Rattle seed in the orchard to help control the grasses. In February, the fruit trees in the orchard had their winter pruning.

Dates for the diary

Sustainable Overton will be providing information shortly on Overton’s Green Weekend on 15^th and 16^th June, 2024. You can meet the teams and hear more about what they’ve been doing and what they’ll be up to for the rest of the year.

If you’d like to know more about Sustainable Overton including our Environment team’s work please get in touch, we’d love to hear from you: [email protected]