In 2022, Bright Green Nature launched its Wild Your Space microgrant, which provides small grants to households and schools to help people bring wildlife into their gardens, restore natural ecosystems and create wildlife corridors across the Scottish Borders
Our application form is simple, we have guidance further down this page and we’re available and happy to help if you need any support with your project.
CALL 15 IS NOW CLOSED FOR APPLICATIONS
Our next call for applications will open mid-April 2026
- Increase the Number of Natural Spaces available to Wildlife
- Create Wildlife Corridors
- Connect People with Nature
- Connect Communities
“I just wanted to say a big thank you for the grant. We’re all really enjoying pond-watching and can’t wait to see what else moves in!”
— Jennie (call 4)
Why Wild Your Space?
Increase the Number of Natural Spaces available to Wildlife
The UK’s gardens cover more land than all of our National Nature Reserves combined. That offers a huge opportunity to create safe spaces, food sources and nest sites for wildlife. Hardscaping and lawns unfortunately offer no benefit to wildlife, but if you can devote even part of your garden to native flowering plants, fruit bearing shrubs or a small pond, wildlife will be able to visit and thrive. These spaces, although small, can help to combat the effects of climate change too.
Even if you have a tiny garden or a balcony, you can offer food sources and shelter for a host of insects, birds and mammals.
Create Wildlife Corridors
“Natural Corridors” are stretches of wild habitat along which wildlife can move safely, providing continuous (or “stepping stone”) sources of food, shelter and nest sites. Without these corridors, wildlife populations become isolated, making them less resilient (e.g. if a pond dries up and the next wet pond is too far away) and more vulnerable to extinction due to loss of genetic diversity.
Gardens are naturally connected to each other, to nearby public green spaces and to surrounding wild spaces. So, if we all provide a little natural space in our gardens, we naturally create corridors across our villages and towns.
Connect People with Nature
Green spaces are as beneficial to people as they are to wildlife. To escape into nature in your own back garden is a treat not to be missed, helping with relaxation and improving our physical and mental health.
By bringing nature to us rather than going out to find nature, we also get all those benefits without adding pressure to our more public natural spaces.
Connect Communities
We love it when communities work together to share ideas, share plants and spread the word about the importance of our gardens for wildlife. Connecting with neighbours and friends while we connect our gardens is not only great for wildlife but can really help people feel less isolated or lonely.
Southern Hawker Dragonfly – Jess McDonald
How Does it Work?
We have 4 “calls” for applications each year. Each call will be announced here on the website and on our Facebook page and will stay open for approximately 3 weeks.
Applicants can request up to £350 to fund a nature restoration project in their garden or other green space. This could be buying plants for a pond or bog garden, planting some native perennial plants in a border, adding a native hedge, adding a small tree to feed birds and pollinators or converting a lawn to a wildflower meadow.
Criteria for the grant, lots of guidance and an application form can be found below and if you have any questions, please just ask. The grant is competitive so please do read the guidance documents before completing the application form to maximise the chance of your application being successful.
One each call closes, applications are reviewed by our team and our trustees and we aim to notify applicants of funding decisions in about 4 weeks.
If you need any help, please contact Justine.
How to Apply
Please read the guidance documents below and then download and complete the Application Form: