BBC Breathing Places

Breathing Places is a major BBC learning campaign to inspire and motivate the public to create and care for nature-friendly green spaces where they live.

This year Plymouth is linking with the BBC awareness campaign Breathing Places. This involves the BBC television character 'Jelly' planting a wildlife bed in The Hoe Park assisted by local children. The centrepiece of the bed will be a carpet bedding of Jelly. Breathing Places also encourages local people to build and put up bird and bat boxes to encourage wildlife back into urban areas with an event being hosted in West Hoe Park.

Tree Party which was the best attended in the whole country took place in Central Park and was visited by over 2000 people with over 700 trees being planted in one day.

In conjunction with Parks Services and the BBC a park's forum has been established for the 'friends' of our parks to meet, discuss and share with each other their problems, concerns, successes and ideas.

At the initial forum various speakers were arranged to give insight and advice on managing green space. These speakers included representatives from:

• Natural England
• The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
• Groundwork
• British Trust for Conservation Volunteers
• Diggin it
• BBC

Each group was given £600 to spend on a project of their choice within their park.