The “Neighbourhood in Bloom” project was launched by the municipality of Antwerp to encourage residents to take up gardening and plant trees in order to refresh the city, improve air quality and create more breeding grounds for animals.
The municipality of Antwerp in Belgium is distributing 2,000 free trees to residents who have a garden or unpaved space available to plant them.
The initiative runs until September 30 and aims to encourage citizens to become more environmentally friendly, helping to cool the city in summer, improve air quality and create more breeding grounds for birds and other animals.
The free tree program is part of the “Neighbourhood in Bloom” project launched last year by the City Council, when it transformed a streetcar carriage into a mobile garden for a day.
As well as trees, residents of the central Belgian city can order plants and garlands to hang between their houses and in the street. Afterwards, they have to answer a short questionnaire about the space and sunlight available, in order to determine the most suitable type of tree, from a list of 20 types of trees, selected for their ability to adapt to the urban environment.
The district council is responsible for lifting the floor tiles, laying the soil and planting the gardens, while the residents are responsible for maintaining them.
The municipality is also offering financial support (worth 150 euros) to those who want to buy a rainwater harvesting barrel to water their gardens. Rainwater can also be used by the neighborhood to water the area’s vegetation.
Plants and trees help lower temperatures in cities, mitigating the “urban heat island” effect, reducing pollution and making the air cleaner, attracting nesting birds, squirrels and insects and improving people’s mood and mental well-being.
In 2022, a similar initiative took place in the city, in which residents were encouraged to create more than 200 front gardens, 170 tree areas and 100 garlands.
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