Lambeth Bee Roads are corridors along our roads and highways which provide food, shelter and habitat for wildlife. In partnership with local community groups and residents, the scheme creates wildflower-rich roadside verges and other wildlife-friendly spaces on housing estates and parks, including meadows, hedges and rain gardens.
As part of its Climate Action Plan, the council is committed to managing 30% of public open spaces and waterways for wildlife by 2030.
Wildlife needs food and shelter to survive. This means we need a wide range of plants which flower throughout the year and habitats including woodland, species-rich grassland, meadows, wetlands, dead wood and areas of standing or moving water.
Parks, nature reserves, railway lines, cemeteries, private gardens and flower-filled balconies all offer important resources, and wilder street-side land helps connect these up together.
Lambeth Bee Roads was launched in 2022 with funding from the Mayor of London’s Green and Resilient Spaces Fund. Working with local volunteers, we have tried out a wide range of interventions to enhance biodiversity in our roadside green spaces.
These trials, running until 2024, have provided useful insights into a range of approaches which we can apply to future biodiversity and roadside projects.
To learn more about Lambeth’s work to boost biodiversity across the borough, read the Lambeth Pollinator Action Plan 2021–2025 (PDF, 1.8MB).