News: Cumbernauld Living Landscape celebrate a successful year for town’s greenspaces

The Cumbernauld Living Landscape partnership has successfully completed the first year of its ‘Creating Natural Connections’ programme. Significant improvements have been made to the town’s greenspaces, including planting of over 5600 native trees and almost 100 people taking part in green mental wellbeing programmes. The ambitious four-year programme includes a variety of projects at locations across Cumbernauld, focussed on improving

Make space for others in nature

Like so many others across the country, I left the office on Monday 16th March for the last time in a long while. For me, I knew it was going to be a really long time before I saw my desk or my colleagues again. At 28 weeks pregnant I was now officially ‘at-risk’, and should stay home for at

Window wildlife-watching

Nestled in the middle of an industrial estate, I’m always amazed by how much wildlife there is to see from the Cumbernauld Living Landscape office window. As I type, I’m watching two male bullfinches potter about, their orange-pink bibs unmistakeable against the open green grass. I’ve seen flurries of visiting redwings, prancing young roe deer; and there’s always robins, starlings

A bug’s eye view of volunteering

We were marching through the woods. The sun bursting through the trees, the cold air sucked into our lungs. My volunteers had entered a new area of Cumbernauld Glen; unveiled before their eyes. In this space they saw what first appeared to be a void; the last vestiges of winter still clinging onto the forest. I prompted them to take

NEWS: New boardwalk improves access to nature at St. Maurice’s Pond

A new boardwalk has been installed at St. Maurice’s Pond, improving the site’s accessibility and helping visitors get closer to nature. Installed by North Lanarkshire Council in partnership with Cumbernauld Living Landscape, it replaces the previous boardwalk which was no longer fit for purpose. The new boardwalk is wider with more subtle bends and a smoother anti-slip surface, making it

Planting plastic

Planting trees is a rewarding experience, something we’re all being encouraged to do to help tackle the climate crisis and boost biodiversity in our local greenspaces. But the work doesn’t stop there if we want these trees to develop into healthy woodlands. Last week our Nature Ninjas volunteers were out collecting old tree guards in Glencryan Wood – not the

Creating early connections with nature

Firstly I’d like to introduce myself, my name is Gemma Woodford and I’ve recently started working with Cumbernauld Living Landscape as the Creating Natural Connections learning assistant. I’ll be going into primary schools throughout Cumbernauld to run environmental workshops and activities with children in classes 5-7, with the workshops running throughout term time. In previous years it was thought that

Visit your tree at Broadwood

If you took part in our tree planting day at Broadwood Loch in December you had the option to download an app and locate the exact grid reference for your tree. This means you’ll be able to chart your tree’s progress as it develops and matures, hopefully for many years to come! It will be fascinating to see how the

Get back to nature in 2020

Taking our volunteers out at New Year always resonates strongly with me— I first started volunteering at New Year. So woooooOOooooOOOo, I want to take you back 8 years to 2012. I was completing my zoology dissertation. It was very boring! I felt like most of the time I had been cooped up inside doing calculations, tallying up surveys, reading

Getting stuck in for nature

Last Thursday as many as 300 people joined Cumbernauld Living Landscape at Broadwood Loch to grab a spade and plant a tree before enjoying some festive treats round the campfire.   With it being polling day we had a steady flow of children looking for something active to do on their day off from school, and plenty of adults looking for