Volunteers create wildlife garden at Brighouse station after two years of hard work

The old goods yard and railway siding have been transformed by a 15-person team from the Friends of Brighouse Station, who helped clear the overgrown trees and litter before weeding the area and constructing raised beds filled with drought-resistant plants and a woodchipped path, using recycled timber from an old fence at Platform 1.

They also planted a triangular bed of ornamental red and blue grasses, an array of flowers and 15 square meters of wildflower turf to encourage insects, bees and birds to populate the area.

The volunteers, who spent more than 600 hours working on the project after it got underway in July 2022, unveiled the finished product during a ceremony earlier this month at the train station, which is operated by Northern.

Known as the Climate Change Garden, it was designed to be low maintenance and require very little watering.

For their work on the garden and two other projects, which enhanced the station with a stunning floral display and some impressive community artwork from Calderdale College students, the group of volunteers were presented with a Gold Award at the Community Rail Awards 2024 in Swansea earlier this week.

Paul Marshall, chair of the Friends of Brighouse Station, said “Volunteers have worked through the summer sun, winter frost, and rainy periods to complete this worthy project.

“Thank you to our volunteers, Northern, and local businesses for their support.”

He added: “The more I look at it, the prouder I am. We don’t do it to win prizes, we do it because we like it and want to make the station look nice for the people who use it.

“It cheers people up and makes them smile.”

Kerry Peters, regional director for Northern in Yorkshire, Humberside and the East Midlands, said: “We’re hugely grateful to Friends of Brighouse Station who have transformed an area filled with overgrown trees and bushes into a fantastic wildlife garden for our customers to enjoy.

“We hope some of our customers, who use this station to make more than 320,000 journeys a year, will get time to take a stroll through the garden and appreciate all of the volunteers’ hard work.”   

She added: “We work closely with hundreds of adoption groups across our network to keep our stations tidy for customers and enhance their appearance.”

Northern is the second largest train operator in the UK, with 2,500 services a day to more than 500 stations across the North of England.