Day One at Broad Marsh's New Green Heart Space

If you’re ever at a pub quiz wondering what Robin Hood's pointy sort of hat is called: the answer, I’ll tell you now without smirking too much, is a ‘bycocket’. Robin’s hat was prettied up with a feather or two, and dyed, of course, Lincolnshire Green. And despite one or two rain-bleached office blocks, part of Nottingham’s idea of itself is still that sort of colour, lush and verdant, unspoiled. A green town, somewhere you can lean against a tree and plan an adventure.

And so it’s with great anticipation that we’re attending the opening of the new Green Heart space - a major part of the regeneration of the Broad Marsh area as it undergoes its metamorphosis from concrete compound to the sort of airy, relaxing district where you go for an inhaled panini and five minutes’ shut-eye at lunchtime.

At LeftLion we've kept a beady eye on the Green Heart idea from its inception four years ago. At the very beginning we published this article in which Ewan Cameron - who went on to create the petition which got the project rolling in the first place - made the case for a new spot for nature in this part of town. He acknowledged the memory of ‘the gymnastic monkey in the Gordon Scott shoe shop’ while painting a newer landscape for Broad Marsh: a vista filled with plants, ‘a place that would quite literally help our city to breathe’.

And that it will - now these wonderings have come into being. Just being here today, watching as the ribbon’s cut by beaming kids from Mellers Primary School, chaperoned by Clare Ward, our new East Midlands Mayor - you get the impression of a city that’s been through a lot recently, taking a moment to collect itself. There’s chatter, and soft laughter, and lots of people with dangly earrings meandering.

This is a place built to be calming. There are 38 trees with names that have an air of mystery for a non-gardener like me: salix, alnus, nyssa sylvatica. There are marsh and rain gardens with wetland planting, rugged sandstone pathways, and a rainbow of wildflowers which have been formed, I’m told in a ‘superbloom’ - which is a lovely word, really. Steve Dickens, the Project Manager, tells me that he’s spotted dragonflies, newts and frogs already - ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many bees in one place’. The centrepiece is the new marsh pond, the heart of the Green Heart, a feature that’s been lost for hundreds of years in all but name, coming back to where it belongs.

It might be tempting to give this a quick thumbs up and be on our way, but these sorts of projects aren’t just set-dressing - they matter. The walk into town for a newcomer from the train station now takes in the welcoming Central Library and a path that winds through greenery - that’s a much-improved first impression, a different idea of Nottingham for those who’ve never been here before. And being in nature lowers our cortisol, lowers our muscle tension and blood pressure, improves our feelings of well-being to a degree that can be remarkable. We’ve brought a slice of that peace into our city centre.

All of the teams responsible have done fantastic work in both vision and execution: Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, Nottingham City Council, Townshend Landscape Architects, Willmott Dixon, Pick Everard, ATV Contract Services and of course the many green-lovers who signed Ewan’s original petition - this is clearly the result of the successful collaboration that makes any big project tick.

As I do a second lap of the pond and go to leave, there’s a man taking snaps on his phone and looking thoughtful. This is Mark, who was a landscape gardener himself, for many years. ‘It’s lovely’, says Mark, ‘to have a tranquil space in the city centre…I just hope that people look after it, that we make it a priority to look after it’. And of course that’s the second half of the project - to really value this, to take this new part of the city into our hearts. And you know what - I think as I see a young boy pointing a purple wildflower out to his mum - I reckon we will.