Growing Resilient Urban Ecosystems

Access to green space plays a vital role in our mental and physical wellbeing. But beyond this, creating and protecting natural habitats in urban environments is essential for supporting biodiversity and strengthening resilience in the face of climate change.

Grow Urban Festival and The Conduit bring together leading experts and practitioners to explore how we can nurture thriving urban ecologies across both new and existing green spaces. From rethinking the way we garden, to large-scale rewilding initiatives that help mitigate flooding, this conversation will examine what it takes to build cities that work in harmony with nature.

Taking place at the Guinness Vaults, right next door to The Conduit, this event will welcome local residents, businesses, and organisations to come together and spark a shared dialogue on urban biodiversity and resilience.

Please be aware that this is an 18+ event.

Event Schedule

6:30pm: Pre-event socialising and networking
A cash bar will be available for refreshments.

7:00pm: Event begins

8:00pm: Event ends

Speakers

Sheila Das is Head of Gardens and Parks at the National Trust as the Trust embarks upon the delivery of its ‘People and Nature Thriving’ strategy.  Having changed career in the early 2000’s, Sheila studied at Kew, worked for English Heritage, and was a garden manager at RHS Garden Wisley with responsibility for Education, Edibles, Seed and Wellbeing until 2024. Sheila is passionate about growing food in sustainable ways to support planetary and human health and interpreting the gardener’s role as a participant in landscapes from past to present to future. Sheila is well known for being committed to soil health and looks to develop thoughts around how systems connect and how people can rediscover and celebrate their role in that connection. With a firm commitment to horticultural training, Sheila has been a trustee for the Professional Gardeners’ Trust, a co-founder of the Gardener X exchange scheme and is now a Trustee for the Beth Chatto Education Trust.

Danny Clarke is a British garden designer who shot to fame in 2015 as BBC’s Instant Gardener. He has graced our screens with a host of popular garden makeover shows and horticultural advice. In 2019, he joined the ITV ‘This Morning’ team presenting colourful and creative garden transformations. Danny is now a member of Alan Titchmarsh’s Love Your Garden team. 2021 saw Danny co-present a unique garden makeover show on 5Star/Channel 5, Filthy Garden SOS. He also runs his own bespoke garden design company, the Black Gardener and co-directs CIC Grow 2 Know, who are committed to bringing horticulture to young people and disadvantaged communities. Danny is passionate about making a difference to climate change and community integration. He is known for his charismatic and fun approach to garden design which is affordable and desirable to people of all ages. ‘Having access to a garden should be a right, not a privilege’ and his biggest wish is that all make the most of our green spaces for the health of the planet, our communities and our souls.

Dr Tilly Collins is a senior academic in the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London. She is passionate and pragmatic about our urban greenspaces and, coming from an arboricultural and Entomological background, particularly their trees and insects. Tilly has written about many social and ecological aspects of greenspace in cities in an academic context, maintains active collaborations with several central London Boroughs, and chairs the friends’ group for Hammersmith Park sited in one of the most culturally and economically diverse parts of the city.

Elliot Newton is Co-founder and Director of Rewilding at Citizen Zoo, where he leads work to challenge perceptions of how much nature cities can and should support by integrating and applying rewilding principles. He has played a leading role in some of London’s most innovative nature recovery projects, including the Ealing Beaver Project, the co-founding of the London Beaver and London White Stork Forums, water vole reintroductions across south-west London, and the Wild Tolworth programme, London’s first large-scale urban rewilding site. Through his work, Elliot shows how nature can be part of everyday urban life while empowering local communities to drive change for wildlife close to home.

Full Panel to be announced soon.