Building with Nature (BwN)’s mission is to make high quality green infrastructure integral to placemaking in the UK, maximising benefits for both people and the natural world. The BwN Standards define what good green infrastructure looks like at each stage of the development process. This framework contains 12 individual standards built around the themes of Core, Wellbeing, Water, and Wildlife. The framework itself is also easy-to-use and is free to download. A Building with Nature approach is one that through the provision of good green infrastructure:

• Optimises multifunctionality and connectivity
• Positively responds to the climate emergency and maximises environmental net gains
• Champions a context driven approach and creates distinctive places
• Supports equitable and inclusive places and secures effective place-keeping
• Brings nature and water closer to people
• Delivers climate resilient water management
• Delivers wildlife enhancements and underpins nature’s recovery

Planning authorities use the standards to develop and test new planning policy with planners benefitting from a clear picture of what good looks like, a shared framework of principles, and the ability to draw on supporting specialist knowledge they may not have in-house. Professional experts – ecologists, landscape architects, and planning consultants – use the standards to engage with clients and improve physical development of green infrastructure. Many go through training to become Approved Assessors, so they can help their schemes achieve BwN certification. The Standards were developed to support cross-disciplinary decision making and inform better design and delivery of green infrastructure.

Effectiveness of the solution is determined through the assessment and third-party audit of development proposals and/or policy documents. Applicants and their projects/policy that meet the Standards are granted, by way of a certificate, a BwN Nature Award with all awarded projects/policies listed on the Building with Nature website.

The cost of appointing a BwN Approved Assessor will vary depending on the appointment and project scope. The accreditation cost also varies from £1,300 to £8,000 + VAT and depends on the size of the development. The accreditation cost for a policy document is currently £2,625 + VAT.

BioCube is an innovative multifunctional habitat unit with combined wet and dry habitats which provides homes for a range of species, from hedgehogs to hoverflies, to create a compact and attractive self-contained ecosystem. Each habitat within the BioCube has been carefully located to provide protection and insulation from external influences such as predators, extreme temperatures, and noise.

BioScapes have developed a range of specialist planters that contain houses for hedgehogs, butterflies, bees, amphibians and birds. They have been designed to quickly boost biodiversity in any residential, educational, community or commercial setting.

Simple to install and easy to maintain these wildlife planters provide an effective solution to quickly add green infrastructure. Trials conducted by ecologists showed a significant increase in species density and overall biodiversity gains – a single BioCube habitat unit delivered a 10-fold increase in invertebrates and a 3-fold increase in amphibian species.

Connected to surface water drainage the unit can act as a rainwater garden to divert water from roofs and other hard surfaces to reduce flood risk downstream.

Each BioCube is made from recycled or recyclable materials and the unit itself requires minimal maintenance if any at all.

When installed, each BioCube provides over 4m2 of planting area (and 2.5m3 of habitat volume). BioCube has been developed as a modular solution enabling configuration suited to the location. Each BioCube costs £2,999.95 excluding fill material and plants. Other BioScapes habitat units are smaller to suit different applications.

For ease, a full turn key offer is available including pre-survey, ecological evaluation, full installation and set up and a follow up ecological survey to assess impact.

Benefits include high levels of community engagement and customer satisfaction, placemaking benefits, 10-fold increase in biodiversity and other ecosystem benefits including water management and carbon sequestration.

A modular, bioretention rain garden system, manufactured in the UK from 100% recycled material. The HydroPlanter was primarily designed to intercept water as close as source as possible, to decrease the volume of water from entering the sewer network. By diverting rain water from hard surfaces (roofs, roads, pavements etc) via the vegetated planter greatly reduces the peak flows during a storm event.

The HydroPlanter is a stormwater management solution that can be retrofitted into highways schemes and on new developments of any size. This is a ‘plug and play’ sustainable urban drainage solution that can attenuate and cleanse storm water and provide amenity and biodiversity to new and existing spaces. The modules will be filled with a particular soil specification and planted wildflowers and biodiverse grasses.

The concept is flexible, scalable and each unit stacks together. Installation is fast, simple and offers significant savings to alternative methods. The modular characteristics with pre-calculated hydrological performance statistics mean that specification and design is very simple for any given catchment area.

Features include:

• 100% recycled materials
• Slot-together modules
• Optional exceedance flow drain point
• Stack-able design for transport efficiency

The cost depends on the size of the roof, logistics and access. Retrofit green roofs cost between £100 and £200 per m2 to install and establish. The Milton Keynes Green Roof Project value is £80,000 which covers an area of 550m2. This includes a 6-month programme of ongoing maintenance and development and training for the end user.

By retrofitting green roofs it can result in multiple indirect benefits including reduced heating costs, extending the life span of the roof, health and wellbeing, food growing opportunities and biodiversity net gain, plus building internal capability for long-term stewardship of the roof.

Building green infrastructure into cities, such as water retention and/or detention on the roof, contributes to effective stormwater management. Sempergreen Detention and Retention Roofs harvest rainwater on the roof, allowing water to be efficiently stored without having to dig underground, which is especially useful in urban areas with little space and on existing buildings.

The Detention Roof is a lightweight, green roof stormwater management solution which works on existing buildings and new builds. It can be applied to roofs with a slope of up to 2º. The system ensures that rainwater run off is temporarily detained and slowly drained delaying run-off by up to 24 hours. A sedum vegetation blanket is the top layer which also helps to mitigate excessive rainfall by evapotranspiration.

The Retention Roof is a water storage solution for new-build projects with flat zero fall. It is possible to cover the roof with sedum, wildflower and other biodiversity vegetation blankets as this doesn’t have to be a lightweight system. The system can also be used in conjunction with solar panels.

• Retention Roof: £110 plus VAT per m2 plus installation for sedum-herb blanket and 8cm extensive substrate.
• Detention Roof: £140 plus VAT per m2 plus installation for sedum mix blanket, 40mm lightweight substrate roll, honeycomb and detention layer.

Returns include not only water retention, but also extra benefits such as increased local biodiversity, extended lifespan of the roof covering, and natural cooling of indoor and outdoor areas.

To see how the Green Roof Project works in just 4 minutes watch !

The Green Roof Project is, in effect, a takeover of rooftops for people and nature by creating green spaces to support community cohesion, raise awareness and demonstrate the benefits of green roofing.

The Green Roof Project combines both product (green roof, roof garden and growing spaces) and service (installation, training and outreach) to pioneer the retrofit potential of green and blue roofs in towns and cities. In a time of climate emergency and biodiversity loss, it is essential that towns and cities look at green infrastructure opportunities to mitigate the effects of climate change. These are opportunities that can recreate lost wildlife habitats and improve the natural environment.

By retrofitting green roofs it can result in multiple indirect benefits including reduced heating costs, extending the life span of the roof, health and wellbeing, food growing opportunities and biodiversity net gain, plus building internal capability for long-term stewardship of the roof. The Green Roof Project has been tested and proved that can be translated to any appropriate roof, any size, anywhere.

EM|Path is a not-for-profit social enterprise that uses a range of people-centred co-production and engagement techniques to support sustainable community development and environmental protection. EM|Path works across Europe with organisations and groups to help them develop sustainable and inclusive projects, design outputs, conflict resolution and team building.

EM|Path works with cities to prepare the ground for meaningful co-production. At the heart of delivering this are the fundamental principles of slow research, creative thinking, and contextual understanding that are key for enabling stakeholders to express and connect the tangible and intangible factors that matter and that build the requisite trust and shared vision. Delivering the EM|Path approach requires time and ongoing commitment by all stakeholders to build lasting, sustainable and just transitions across the multitude of challenges facing us.

The EM|Path Approach is a co-creative, arts-based engagement process developed within the Connecting Nature project to support cities in the design, delivery and stewardship of nature-based solutions. The EM|Path Approach uses several methods – memory work, immersion in nature, embodied reflection, eco-therapy, and body mapping – to help capture lived experiences and build our stories in and with nature. It works with communities and stakeholders to co-create meaniful connections through emotional mapping, empathetic connections, embodied reflections, embedding shared learning and knowledge and empowering communities.

EM|Path tailors its offer to the specific context and needs of each project, to provide the essential foundations for spatial, institutional, and local development transformations that respect social and environmental justice.

The investment will depend on the time, goals, context, number of stakeholders, degree/depth of consultation, and could be in the range of 15%-20% of budget.

This solution enables developers to rapidly understand natural capital impacts as they iterate through designs. It allows changes at the earliest stage of the development process, hugely increasing the likelihood of successful retention/addition of natural capital in the build stage. The solution includes 2 key outputs which will enable accessibility to a wide range of users from communities and local authorities to consultants, developers, and engineers at the design stage. The Natural Capital and Biodiversity Design Tool captures biodiversity units alongside ecosystem service (ES) values, using i-Tree Eco.

The solution, incorporates two stand-alone metrics:

• i-Tree Design – Developed by the United States Forest Service, Davey Tree Expert Company and other collaborators.
• Biodiversity Metric 2.0 (BM 2.0) – Developed by Natural England.

Currently, using a grid reference or similar, the user can find a location and plot a polygon to cover the footprint. Once the user has inputted the planting/landscape design, the tool calculates current ES values and uses them along with the species of tree specified, geographical and climatological data to predict growth rates and model the ES values into the future. This creates the “natural capital breakeven point” i.e., the year at which the new planting will replace the values lost because of the scheme. ES are also quantified (kg) and valued (£). The monetary expression of ES in GBP further illustrates the economic, environmental and community gains of projects in a format which is digestible by those who work in construction design through to local councillors and those who reside and work in local communities.

• Free software – open access i-Tree Design tool. This output is simple to use, and easily accessible for community projects.
• Premium software – subscription service for commercial projects – designed for local authorities and consultants, incorporating both i-Tree Design and Biodiversity Monitoring 2.0.

Technical Solutions is one of the Elements of the Connecting Nature Framework. The Framework helps cities and other organisations to design NBS from a systemic perspective. The Framework was developed as a process tool to help cities and other organisations navigate the path towards the large scale implementation of NBS.

The Technical Solutions Guidebook supports practitioners in navigating the technical components that go into the planning, delivery and the long-term stewardship of NBS. Technical solutions include, for example, the type of NBS selected, the plants selected, anything that takes into account the local circumstances and, when it comes to the stewardship or ongoing management of the NBS, feeding the results of evaluation and on-going measurement into the project is also considered a technical aspect.

The Technical Solutions Guidebook supports practitioners in asking the right questions when considering social, environmental and economic benefits, needs and trade-offs. It builds on the generation of knowledge about local needs and the local context. It also considers impacts, synergies and trade-offs across scales and time.

To see how The Connecting Nature Framework works in under 7 minutes watch !

In response to the above uncertainty, Connecting Nature has developed a process tool to help organisations and individuals navigate the path towards the large-scale implementation of NBS. The Connecting Nature Framework places NBS at the core of an interactive process. The process runs through three distinct phases of development for a NBS: 1) Planning 2) Delivery 3) Stewardship.

Throughout each phase there are seven separate elements that need to be considered to shape individual NBS:

1. Technical solutions
2. Governance
3. Financing and business models
4. Nature-based enterprises
5. Co-production
6. Impact assessment
7. Reflexive monitoring

The tool is free to use being made available as an open access resource following its development in the European Commission co-funded project Connecting Nature. In order to mainstream NBS processes, it is likely that significant governance and investment changes will be required. The Framework provides guidance in relation to how this can be developed and achieved.

Policysupport.org consists of a suite of tools to provide rigorous spatial evidence in development decision making. The tools include Co$tingNature, WaterWorld, EcoActuary and FreeStation.

Co$tingNature, WaterWorld and EcoActuary are sophisticated spatial policy support systems that bring together the best available spatial data in easily used web based spatial policy support systems which help to understand:

1. The impact of development on Nature and of Nature on development (Co$tingNature);
2. The impact of development on Water resources and water risk (WaterWorld);
3. The impact of development and climate change on flood risk (EcoActuary).

FreeStation is a suite of designs for self-build low-cost internet-of-things monitoring devices and associated build, maintenance, and deployment guides for monitoring the effectiveness of nature-based solutions at spatial or temporal scales too fine – or situations too complex – for modelling. Together this suite of tools significantly reduces technical and financial barriers to use of rigorous spatial evidence in development decision making.

All are freely accessible for non-commercial use and licensed for commercial use. The annual license depends on the level of functionality required, but ranges from £1000-£9000 currently. These licenses include support.