Coastal Housing is a not-for-profit housing association which covers all areas of Swansea, as well as areas in Camarthen, Neath, Port Talbot and Bridgend. We are exploring ways to make our organisation more environmentally friendly, to encourage biodiversity on our estates, and promote health and wellbeing initiatives using gardens and greenspaces. We plan to redevelop some of our unused communal gardens and greenspaces into more interactive spaces, by creating community allotments, sowing wildflower meadows, or creating natural play areas. Our 'Community Asset Team, working with our Health &nd Wellbeing Manager, considers our land, our gardens and greenspaces as community assets, and something worth investing in and celebrating. We also realise our responsibility, as a landowner and landlord of thousands of gardens, to help in the fight against the decline of pollinators, and habitats for birds etc.
We are planning to redevelop the area of land on one of ourextra care schemes into a community allotment. The scheme is Ty Twyn Teg in Neath and it shares a boundary with the local community center, who are happy to be involved. Local councilors are also quite excited about the project. We are planning to install allotments, wildflower lawns, and have had positive conversations with a local Beekeeper who is keen to house 3 hives on the project. We've also discussed a mini orchard on site, as well as wheelchair friendly raised planters. We recently started a gardening group at Ty Twyn Teg, which now has 16 members. We are hoping the gardening club can benefit from the raised planters around the site, and the local community can benefit from the allotment project.