Last year, the Nextdoor Foundation donated £50,000 to community charity Groundwork to support the further development of their Green Community Hubs programme, supporting five green space projects across the UK. The sites in Coventry, Leeds, Middlesbrough, Flintshire and Ballymena - all places where access to high-quality green space can be hard to come by. A year on, the impact speaks for itself. Across all five hubs, here's what local communities have achieved together:
But behind every number is a person, and those stories are where the real magic lives.
In Coventry, The People's Patch - once an overgrown, neglected site - has been transformed into a thriving weekly meeting place for people of all ages and abilities. An incredible 96% of participants reported positive mental health outcomes, and 94% noted improvements to their physical health too. Volunteer Amardeep, 30, started coming along in October 2025 simply because he enjoyed gardening and wanted to meet new people. Over 65 hours and 20 sessions later, he says the experience has "helped me gain confidence to be more independent." The site's success even attracted a visit from Mary Creagh MP, Minister for Nature, who joined the first anniversary celebrations in May 2026.
In Leeds, Groundwork Yorkshire ran a 12-week “Green Skills” course at a hostel supporting men leaving the prison system in one of England's most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. One resident started with almost no gardening knowledge and finished with the confidence to apply for a job and sign up for further training - a reminder that growing things has a way of helping people grow too.
In Flintshire, volunteer Lee arrived at the Quayscape Community Garden feeling anxious about meeting new people. Now he's gained his first aid certificate, learned practical skills like hedge laying and coppicing, and has started volunteering at other sites and has reported that his confidence “has grown massively.”
And in Ballymena, pupils from Castle Tower Special School have been getting their hands dirty at the Scullery O'Tullagh allotment, learning everything from using a strimmer safely to planting bare-root hedges. Those skills are now feeding into formal LANTRA qualifications - proof that a community garden can be a classroom too.
This is what Nextdoor is about. Strong communities are built by neighbours who look out for one another, and a shared patch of green space is often where that starts. We're proud of the difference this funding has made, and deeply grateful to the Groundwork teams and the hundreds of volunteers who rolled up their sleeves and did the work.