Residents across Bridgend County Borough will see significant improvements to local green spaces over the next 15 months as a project to create more welcoming natural places gets underway.
Bridgend County Borough Council and the Bridgend Local Nature Partnership have been awarded almost £962,000 by Welsh Government through the Local Places For Nature 2025-27 programme, which aims to develop new natural spaces within urban parts of the county borough.
It is designed to offer a wide range of benefits such as bringing nature closer to people’s doorsteps, supporting wildlife and habitat connectivity, improving health and wellbeing, encouraging greater social interaction, building stronger community connections, and creating safer, more attractive places for people to enjoy.
The programme features a number of key projects. These include transforming a waterlogged section of Aber Fields in Nantymoel into a mix of wetland and woodland environment complete with banks of native wildflowers, a seated viewing platform and new accessible paths.
At Collwyn Woods in Pyle, the partnership will work alongside Pyle Community Council to tackle riverbank erosion and create an all-new natural space that local people can enjoy. In Sarn, the project will work with Valleys To Coast to consult the community and deliver new facilities such as community orchards, areas to grow food, space for outdoor learning, new habitats for pollinators, sensory planting, improved access and more.
Working with both Tanio and the Bridgend Sustainable Food Partnership, the project will also establish a county borough wide series of spaces suitable for growing food, complete with raised beds and other necessary infrastructure.
Finally, the project will bring The Orchard Project, the Kenfig Corporation Trust, Bryngarw Country Park and a small army of volunteers together to establish all-new heritage fruit orchards throughout the county borough.
These orchards will play an important role in helping to analyse and identify unknown fruit varieties while supporting biodiversity and pollination as well as opportunities for community harvesting, training and more.
“As community involvement is central to the success of this very welcome green initiative, the council and the Bridgend Local Nature Partnership are also inviting schools, community councils and local groups to come forward and share their own ideas for how nature could be supported and developed within Bridgend County Borough, and for local people to get involved with the various projects and join in. “This promises to be a highly rewarding initiative which will contribute greatly to community life, and I hope that as many people will respond with their ideas or to find out how they can volunteer to help make these improvements a success for all the community.”
