Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust’s Wilder Portsmouth project in partnership with Southern Co-op have joined forces with Portsmouth Friends of the Earth (PFoE) volunteers to brighten up and replant flowerbeds in Derby Road, North End.

North End has one of the most car-dominated high streets in Portsmouth. London Road is an historic thoroughfare with many independent shops, but incessant traffic noise, narrow pavements, few pedestrian crossings, and high levels of air pollution mean that it is not the ‘street for people’ that it could, and should, be. It is PFoE’s view that North End should be transformed into a low traffic and green neighbourhood with London Road - a low traffic high street at its heart.

Initial work on creating a wilder Derby Road (less than 0.2 miles from London Road) started on the 29^th October last year and despite the rain, volunteers from Friends of the Earth, the Good Gym and the Wildlife Trust made very good progress clearing the site.

Volunteers from PFoE and the Wildlife Trust returned and planted three fruiting trees and twenty-five shrubs and perennials opposite the post office in Derby Road in mid-December 2020.

We are grateful to the Charles Dickens Orchard Trail for donating the trees (different kinds of crab apple), and to local Nelson Ward Councillors for their support.

Greenpeace volunteer James Sebley also joined us on the day to help call for a low traffic neighbourhood in North End.

On the 9^th March 2021 we were finally able to plant the last plants on the site and we now await the beautiful blooms to come. On the day of planting, passers by were very complimentary and supportive and hopefully this will be the start of more greening in this part of the city.

The site will be adopted and managed by volunteers from Creative Advances who provide services for adults and young people with a learning disability and/or autism and associated conditions based in the Portsmouth area. Creative advances have a base in Derby Road and aim to add additional planting of their own as the site develops.