00:00So Knaresboroughs Park is about, similarly to Longlands Common, is about
00:07protecting nature, enhancing nature, opening up the community, providing that
00:13space for people to disconnect, to sort of reconnect with the natural
00:18environment, to learn about our local, you know, natural habitats and just really
00:27I suppose, yeah, just provide that, you know, restoring the kind of commons which I
00:35feel is quite a big part of this, as this sort of formed part of the
00:40ancient Royal Knaresborough Forest which was enclosed in the 1780s, 1770s, so we're
00:48actually, there's an opportunity now where we're buying back this land from
00:52private individuals into common ownership, into community ownership, so
00:57we've got over 3,000 shareholders in the community, so it's a big project, it's a
01:02big site, big ambition, but the kind of, it's so, it's so amazing how much the
01:15community want this kind of stuff to happen and the support we've had both in
01:20people wanting to volunteer and to get involved financially, I think it really
01:25shows that people are starting to think differently about the needs and how they
01:30want to live and their lifestyle and that we do need more open and access
01:34wild spaces where people can just get lost and explore and just be.
01:40I think we were very blessed in Harrogate because we had a lot of green
01:44spaces anyway, but I don't think we can ever have enough and certainly this sort
01:50of prime, sort of green belt space between both Harrogate and Knaresborough
01:54which, you know, potentially is under threat from development and we're
01:58securing that to ensure that there is that green lung, that green space between
02:02the two towns, a thriving place for the community, you know, abundant with nature
02:08and also illustrate the heritage and the history of the area, the landscape and
02:13tell that story through, you know, the project and what we're doing. I think
02:18it's an amazing project as well because it's an opportunity for the community to
02:24actually own it and be a part of it, you know, we're constituted as a community
02:30benefit society, so as I say we have over 3,000 shareholders who are, you know,
02:35stakeholders, shareholders in the company that owns the land, so there's a really
02:39innovative way of securing swathes of green space and doing something positive
02:44that's in the interest of the community and not private individuals. So we've
02:48just launched our crowdfunder now because we need to raise £300,000
02:53to basically seal the deal. We were very grateful to receive a £400,000
02:59grant from a local foundation, the George Moore Foundation, who really kick-started the project for us and we had a
03:07great swathe of pledges and support from the community after that and then
03:11due to time constraints we had to seek a bridging loan from a philanthropic
03:16lender, so Julia Davies from We Have The Power has enabled us to actually put in
03:22a bid and secure the land and now we need to pay her loan off. So our crowdfund
03:26has been launched, we need to raise £300,000, within a week we're already on
03:31£60,000, so we really need as much of the community to come together to really
03:36ensure that we can protect all this land, as much land as possible, to protect the
03:41greenbelt, create more wild spaces for people and nature.
03:46You'll see this from in here. This is the second of the hay meadow fields.
03:51This one is going to be used for a food forest. I don't know whether you know about the food forest concept.
03:57It's a permaculture concept where you plant things in association on different levels.
04:02So you have the big tall fruiting trees and underneath that you have some
04:06intermediate trees like fruit bushes and nut bushes. Underneath that you have
04:11smaller plants and then you have the ground cover plants. It's all planting things in
04:15association because they do much better in association than what they do
04:19individually with bare earth around them.
04:23This has been a dream of the group at Longlands Common for a long time,
04:28to have a food field in addition to their wildlife reserve.
04:32On here are the wild plums.
04:37It's a bullus. It's somewhere between a damson and a slow, I suppose, or a wild plum.
04:46There's a lot of these around here. Can you see?
04:49There's a few damsons around there.
04:52I think part of the concept of the food forest is it's going to encourage foraging,
04:57but they'll plant stuff to be foraged, so it's not kind of threatening nature at all.
05:02It's that kind of concept where you can have some kind of wild plants for your salad.
05:07Also with that we might do the tea garden,
05:10where we can grow all the plants we can use for making tea,
05:13all the different herbs to make kind of interesting teas,
05:16which we can have a brew up as we're working.
05:19And maybe even a dye garden, where you can have dye plants to grow there.
05:24A little corner we can have a patch of wheat or a patch of flax.
05:28So kids, it's not just kids really, is it?
05:31It's other people as well who have lost that connection with where food comes from.
05:37They've lost that connection with the natural world.
05:39So this is a real opportunity to kind of rebuild that connection really.
05:44It's also tremendously good for our well-being to be working outside in the green environment.
05:49We always knew it was good for us, but now it's been proven.
05:53Scientifically, it is good for us to work outside with living things.
05:58And that's such an opportunity really,
06:01to do that alongside all our other stuff of rebuilding biodiversity
06:08and all the other things that we can do here.
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