The Essex and South Suffolk Community Rail Partnership has announced that Open Garden events will be happening at stations across Greater Anglia‘s network over the coming months.

These will allow the public to visit the railway stations’ gardens and see for themselves how they have become a haven for local wildlife.

The partnership believes that as well as contributing to the area’s biodiversity, the volunteer-managed gardens also help to improve the local environment by making it more attractive, and they can function as important community spaces .

They play host to a wide variety of species of butterflies, bees, worms, bats, toads, foxes, deer and birds.

The events will be at South Woodham Ferrers station (Tuesday, 4 June from 10.30am to 1pm), Rayleigh station (Tuesday, 9 July, from 10am to 12pm), Alresford (Monday, 12 August from 10am to 1pm) and Witham (Friday, 6 September, from 10am to 1pm).

Research has demonstrated that many of the region’s wildlife species are dying out rapidly, such as hedgehogs whose population has experienced a 97% drop over the past 50 years.

It is hoped that the rail station gardens, which are part of a movement named WildEast, can play a role in stemming and then reversing this worrying trend.

Wild East also works with other land owners in order to ask them to return land to nature where possible, thereby enabling native flora and fauna to thrive.

For more information about the work that they do, please click here.

We hope our Open Gardens events will attract lots of people to come out and see the amazing things that are being done to keep their local rail stations looking attractive and supporting wildlife, and I hope it will encourage people to take the opportunity to try a trip by train through our beautiful Essex countryside for a fun and memorable day out.

Jayne Sumner, Essex & South Suffolk Community Rail Partnership Engagement Manager