No Plant Left Behind

No Plant Left Behind We are driven by being a sustainble plant company, ensuring all our suppliers and our own personal growing media are 100% sustainble.

At the Make Space Festival, we delivered a sketching picnic designed to encourage girls aged 10–18 to spend time in park...
22/06/2026

At the Make Space Festival, we delivered a sketching picnic designed to encourage girls aged 10–18 to spend time in parks and green spaces in a creative, relaxed, and welcoming way.

Why is this important?

Research shows that teenage girls are less likely than boys to use parks and public spaces regularly, despite the positive impact that time outdoors can have on mental wellbeing, confidence, creativity, and social connection.

Through our sketching picnic, participants were able to:
✨ Engage with their local park in a new way
✨ Express themselves creatively
✨ Connect with peers in a safe environment
✨ Build confidence in using public spaces

By creating opportunities for girls to feel welcome, represented, and engaged in parks, we help foster healthier communities and stronger connections to local green spaces.

Our second engagement point with residents living around the Haggerston towpath took place this weekend. As part of the ...
15/06/2026

Our second engagement point with residents living around the Haggerston towpath took place this weekend. As part of the process, we’re creating a mini documentary to capture the community’s voice, listening carefully to the stories, experiences, and perspectives of those who call this place home.

Building on insights gathered during our previous engagement, including conversations with people living on canal boats, this stage is about understanding the social, cultural, and everyday realities that shape the towpath before any design decisions are made.

Good design begins with listening. Before asking what should be designed, it’s essential to understand why it matters and who it serves. By learning directly from the community, we can create more meaningful, inclusive, and responsive outcomes. A huge thanks to Freddie Vernazza and team for working so hard to make this happen and thanks to hackney_society for coming to have your voice heard.

11/06/2026

Teaching through design change 🌿

Emily is one of our latest volunteer interns and will be spending one day a week with No Plant Left Behind over the summer to learn more about landscape architecture, improving her design, programming, and practical experience skills along the way. As a first-year landscape architecture student, she’ll also get the opportunity to see her design interventions brought to life by working hands-on with the team throughout the build process.

Here you can see a quick session where we were redesigning a space with multiple maintenance access points, topography, and level changes to improve the aesthetics, wildlife value, and user experience of the site.

To solve one of the key maintenance issues, the red squares represent gabions that will be installed as a solution for storing cut branches and leaf waste. In an urban London context, disposing of green waste isn’t always straightforward, so these gabions will help keep materials contained and tidy while also creating mini bug hotels to support biodiversity 🐞

Once these were positioned, we worked through where planting would best frame the spaces, create distinct rooms for users, and maintain clear access routes throughout the site.

20/05/2026

What happens when a group of strangers are brought together with nothing but a pile of wood scraps, a saw, nails, and the simple instruction to create something bees and bugs would love?

Something truly magical ✨🐝

I think we often assume nature needs things to be perfect for wildlife to thrive — but actually, it’s usually the opposite. If you compared a perfectly flat-pack bug hotel to the ones these amazing teams made by hand, I can almost guarantee you’d find more species living in the handmade ones.

Why? Because nature loves diversity. Twigs, branches, rotting wood, uneven gaps, different textures, tiny crevices — all creating multiple habitats and conditions within one space.

But maybe the most important thing created wasn’t just homes for bugs.

It was community.

Everyone arrived as strangers, but through building, creating, and designing together, they became part of the Where Friends Grow community 🌱

Yesterday I was teaching landscape architecture with ecology at the University of Sheffield, tutoring third-year undergr...
18/05/2026

Yesterday I was teaching landscape architecture with ecology at the University of Sheffield, tutoring third-year undergraduate students on their planting module 🌿

This module works a little differently from the typical planting plan. Instead of focusing on flower colour, students are encouraged to think deeply about form, texture, seasonality, and how plants function within a landscape. The focus shifts from the flower to the leaf — because as landscape architects, it’s often the leaves and structure that shape a space for far longer throughout the year.

Students are challenged to truly question every plant they choose: how it behaves seasonally, how it’s used, and what role it plays ecologically and visually. They also learn to draw plants in detail, because when you draw something closely, you begin to properly understand it.

I’m Amy, founder of No Plant Left Behind, and teaching future designers to observe plants beyond aesthetics is something I care deeply about 💚

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