National Education Nature Park grant

The grant is being funded by the Department for Education and administered by the RHS.

There are currently no plans for a Nature Park grant after 2024/25.

The application form opened on Thursday 12 September 2024 and closes at 5pm on Thursday 27 March 2025. The grant has to be spent and invoices and receipts collected by you by Thursday 5 June 2025 and your expenditure reports submitted in the grant portal by Thursday 3 July 2025.

The online application form will be open from Thursday 12 September 2024 until 5pm on Thursday 27 March 2025. You should start preparing early for your application so you know what your project will be, what suppliers you will use and how much it will cost before you apply.

The grant is non-competitive. You only need to fill in the application form correctly to receive the grant. The 2024/25 grant is for up to £10,000. The deadline to apply is 5pm on Thursday 27 March 2025. The grant has to be spent and invoices and receipts collected by you by Thursday 5 June 2025.

The National Education Nature Park and associated grant provides the opportunity for children and young people to develop a meaningful connection to nature and an understanding of our role to act on the biodiversity and climate crises.

As general guidance, your grant must be spent on a project that:

• Transforms a grey space to a green space, or that
• Builds or improves a pond, or that
• Creates or improves a grassland

Please carefully read the guidance on grey to green to make sure you understand this requirement.

To choose what to spend the grant on, you should:

1. Register for the National Education Nature Park
2. Create your site boundary to make sure any changes you make are attributed to your learning site
3. Involve your young people in the Nature Park five step process
4. Explore what other schools have done to gain inspiration for your project
5. Map your site with your learners to understand your starting point. Or if you are an Early Years setting take part in habitat heroes with your young people to understand your starting point
6. Share information about the grant with relevant members of staff. Any member of staff can apply for this grant, but we expect that you consult with your stakeholders and include children and young people in the process
7. Browse and sign up to our range of webinars, which explore key elements of the nature park programme
8. See Is this item eligible for grant expenditure? for more guidance

These case studies might be useful for giving you ideas of what you can do.

The habitat improvements made possible by the grant should involve children and young people in making the decisions about how your education setting will spend your grant. The Nature Park has two specific activity packages, which will ensure young people are at the centre of decision making and feel empowered to take action to improve and care for nature on their education site. Explore the start making decisions resources.

The grant will be paid in advance, so you will need to know how much you will spend before you fill in the application. When we have approved your application for funding and you accept your grant agreement, you are welcome to start buying the items you have included in your application. You do not have to wait for the grant payment to arrive.

No, our decision will not be affected by the amount you request as long as it is for no more than £10,000. You should only request the exact amount you know you will spend.

The grant can only be used for capital spend. In 2024/25, the grant can only be used on any of the themes below or any combination of them:

• Transforms a grey space to a green space, or that
• Builds or improves a pond, wetland, rain garden, bog garden or sustainable drainage system (SuDS) or that
• Creates or improves a grassland

The eligible items must come under four categories below, three of which have expenditure limits.

You can spend up to £10,000 or your full grant on improving biodiversity on your site: plants including shrubs and trees, seeds, plant containers, planting material such as compost or topsoil, gravel, ponds, rain gardens, water holders and irrigation equipment. You can spend part of your grant on other equipment, but you must spend at least part of the grant on biodiversity enhancements.

There are limits on other types of expenditure:

You can spend up to £2,000 on fieldwork resources that will help you carry out your project and enable outdoor learning, e.g. tablets to map your site and measure and record biodiversity. This can be equipment such as tablets, humidity meters, light meters, camera traps and stationery. This portion of the grant can also fund protective covers and insurance for devices.

You can spend up to £2,000 in total on gardening tools, equipment storage, wet weather gear and gloves.

You can use up to 50% of the grant amount on specialist support such as contractors or biodiversity experts. For example, you might pay a biodiversity expert to assess your site using the grey to green guidance and tell you what habitat enhancements will be most effective in improving a grey area of your school grounds. Alternatively, you might pay a contractor to dig up a paved area and plant trees. The specialist must contribute directly to your capital project. The grant can’t be used to pay for workshops or training.

See Is this item eligible for grant expenditure? for more guidance.

Grey to green means creating new areas of natural habitat in a space at your school that currently has very low value biodiversity. The aim is to create new greener areas that support a much greater diversity of life. This means you make your habitat enhancements on:

• Ground currently covered e.g. paving, concrete, gravel or rubble or
• Bare, compacted earth, or
• Fences/walls*, or
• Roofs

You can use your grant to plant up or install a pond on top of these grey spaces, or you can use it to remove covered grey space and add your interventions to the resulting bare earth. Remember that planting in the ground is much more sustainable for the long-term. See the grey to green guidance for further details.

*If you are planting a green fence or wall, you can plant in the ground at the base of the fence or wall.

The grey to green enhancements can be adding ponds, grasslands and wildflowers, flower, fruit and vegetable planters, trees, green walls or roofs, and water butts or other irrigation.

In 2024/25 we are encouraging schools to create or improve enhanced grasslands. This means:

• Short grass with reduced mowing (e.g. fortnightly) and no use of fertiliser/weedkiller/mosskiller. This type of grassland can make excellent mining bee nest habitat and support pollinators
• Wildflowers often called “weeds” are allowed to flower to support pollinators
• Long grass that is allowed to grow. This is better at flood mitigation, cooling, pollution capture, resisting drought and supporting larval stage insects, mammals and amphibians

You can improve a grassland by adding grassland seed mixes or plug plants of grassland plants and spring-flowering bulbs.
 
You should not use the grant to plant trees on existing green space, as this is not eligible expenditure. You can use the grant to add a pond to a grassland or other green space. If you do this, it is recommended to include a wilder area of long grass around the pond to provide some cover for the animals that want to access it.
 
See how to add flower-rich grassland for more guidance.

Yes, you can combine other sources of funding with this grant to spend on the grey to green habitat enhancements. In the application form, we will ask what other funding you have. This is for project evaluation purposes and won't affect the amount we give you.

When you join the Nature Park, you will be sent regular emails that take you step by step through the Nature Park programme, so you know what to do when. You will also be invited to webinars in autumn 2024 about the grants programme and about the Nature Park. You can use part of the grant to pay for expert help and guidance.

We recommend you use the optional checklist resource to help you with your project.

To help you carry out your project, we recommend you use the checklist resource. You should start your project as early as possible. This depends on how big a project it is, eg are you going to dig up some tarmac and need to hire contractors for this? You should also consider:

• How long it will take to involve young people in planning your project
• How long will it take to get quotes from suppliers
• How long will it take to add suppliers to your payment system
• Does your school or Trust pause purchases and payments at certain times eg at the end of the financial year
• What risk assessments do you need to carry out
• What permissions do you need to secure to have work done on your site
• Which stakeholders have to approve your grant agreement and long will this take
• It will take between two and six weeks to receive your grant payment
• If you are going to carry out disruptive works on your site and whether there is a school holiday that will enable you to do this
• The expenditure deadline is Thursday 5 June 2025. You must have all your receipts and invoices showing you have spent the grant by this date

If you want to do this, you do not need to resubmit your application. You will report this to us in the expenditure reporting we will send you (see FAQ below for details). You can move expenditure around within the eligible items as long as it stays within the amount limits for each category i.e.:

Biodiversity enhancements

You can spend up to £10,000 or your full grant on resources that improve biodiversity: plants including shrubs and trees, seeds, plant containers, planting material such as compost or topsoil, gravel, ponds, water holders and irrigation equipment.

There are limits on other types of expenditure:

When you accept your grant agreement, the payment will take two to six weeks to arrive. We ask you to bear with us in the meantime. We will email you an expected payment date usually one week before sending the funds.
The grant must be spent, and receipts and invoices collected by Thursday 5 June 2025. If you know that you won’t be able to spend all your grant by this date, contact [email protected] and we will send instructions for returning the unspent portion.

The grant has to be spent and invoices and receipts collected by you by Thursday 5 June 2025, including paying for any contractors you use, so before applying make sure that works can be completed within the deadline if you need to pay for these in advance. Planting and growing activities can continue after this date, and plant suppliers are often able to deliver plants at the appropriate growing time even if this is some months after payment.

All deadlines are determined to enable us to collect all your expenditure reports and return the underspend to the Department for Education before the end of the academic year 2025, and the deadlines are not flexible.

The grant agreement requires you to keep all receipts for seven years. We will carry out expenditure audits of some settings, and all grantees must report on how their grant was spent using the Department for Education’s Annex Gii form. We will contact grantees with instructions.

It is a requirement of the Department for Education to report on your expenditure. We will ask you to report your expenditure using an online reporting form that we will send you in June 2025. In preparation, you should keep track of what you are buying in each of the grant categories. If your expenditure is audited, you will also be asked to match your expenditure to your receipts/invoices.

You may want to use the example spreadsheet provided at the end of the checklist resource.

No, our funder requires all expenditure reporting to be complete before the grant programme ends in July 2025. All settings must have spent their grant by the deadline. Before applying, you should make sure that you can spend the grant before the expenditure deadline of Thursday 5 June 2025.

As part of your biodiversity project, you can spend part of your grant on making your new green space more accessible, but not for outdoor learning resources not connected to your funded project. For example, putting down surfaces that are suitable for wheelchairs is acceptable. The types of items that are eligible will be decided on a case-by-case basis, so please email us to check. The grant can’t be used for outdoor SEND activities generally, but only for adding and enabling the measuring of biodiversity improvements.

See Is this item eligible for grant expenditure? for more guidance.

If we have contacted your setting direct, you are eligible for the grant. The eligible educational settings have been chosen by the Department for Education. See the Nature Park funding allocation page to find out how the list of eligible schools and how eligibility was determined. If your setting is not on this list, visit our finding funding page for other biodiversity and outdoor education funding options.

See the Nature Park funding allocations page for the list of eligible schools and how eligibility was determined.

If you are a governor or a parent at an eligible school, please share information about the grants with a member of school staff. School staff should check with relevant stakeholders to agree who should fill in the application form on behalf of the school. The RHS will email eligible schools beginning in September 2024 with information about the grants programme. Because children should be involved in the project, we ask that applications aren’t made by e.g. MAT officers. Please see the FAQ for Multi Academy Trust applicants.

One grant is awarded per unique reference number (URN). You can use the grant on any or all of your sites.

Let us know who the lead contact for your school will be by emailing [email protected]. We will email the link to the application form to this person.

The application is done online using our grant portal. The lead applicant will need to register at the portal, and if they have given us their contact they will be emailed a link to the application form. The form should take around 40 minutes on average to fill in. You will need a bank statement for the account the grant will be paid into. The statement must be from the last three months. We can pay the grant into Local Authority or MAT accounts if the setting doesn’t have its own account.

You might find the guidance below helpful:

• Example costings table (113kb pdf)
• Application form guidance (980kb pdf)

You can download the questions in the grant portal. Select the Print Form button at the top of the application form.

We recommend you use the optional checklist resource to help plan the timescales of your project.
You should give yourself enough time to:

• Register for the National Education Nature Park
• Register on the grant portal
• Create your site boundary to make sure any changes you make are attributed to your learning site
• Plan to get the maximum benefit out of your grant by involving your young people in the Nature Park five step process
• Explore what other schools have done to gain inspiration for your project
• Map your site with your learners to understand your starting point, or if you are an early years setting, take part in habitat heroes with your young people to understand your starting point
• Share information about the grant with relevant members of staff. Any member of staff can apply for this grant, but we expect that you consult with your stakeholders and include children and young people in the process
• Browse and sign up to our range of webinars, which explore key elements of the nature park programme
• Choose what you will do in your project, what you need to buy and how much it will cost

We prefer for applications to come direct from the schools themselves. The purpose of the National Education Nature Park programme is for all young people to develop a meaningful connection to nature and lead the way in transforming their own school grounds for nature and people. Therefore, grant applications need to be completed by each individual eligible school to ensure that children and young people are involved in the process and that the interventions chosen are tailored to meet the specific needs of each education setting.

The lead applicant and anyone who will edit or sign off the application form will need to register on the Flexigrant portal.

If you haven’t yet been sent the application form link, contact natureparkgrants@rhs.org.uk after you have registered and ask for the link.

You will apply using our grant portal in Flexigrant. The lead applicant should create a profile. Please note, you will have to register separately on both Flexigrant and on the Nature Park website itself.

After you have registered on Flexigrant, you will be able to access the link to the application form. You can find the link at the top of the email sent to you in September 2024. To be sent the link again, contact natureparkgrants@rhs.org.uk.

You don’t have to complete the grant application all at once, but can save your progress and return to continue filling it in.

You can download the questions in the grant portal. Select the Print Form button at the top of the application form.

If all sections are marked Complete, and your Participants have also completed but you can't see the Submit Application button, refresh the page.

To check if your participants have completed the form, select the Participants tab on the Summary page.

Your filled in application can be seen by going to the Application Portal and selecting View.

We recommend you use the optional checklist resource to help you with your project. Let us know who the lead contact for your school will be by emailing [email protected].

We will contact this person in autumn 2024 with a link to the application form. In the meantime:

• Register for the National Education Nature Park
• Register on the grant portal
• Create your site boundary to make sure any changes you make are attributed to your learning site
• Plan to get the maximum benefit out of your grant by involving your young people in the Nature Park five step process
• Explore what other schools have done to gain inspiration for your project
• Map your site with your young people to understand your starting point, or take part in habitat heroes if you are an Early Years setting
• Share information about the grant with relevant members of staff. Any member of staff can apply for this grant, but we expect that you consult with your stakeholders and include children and young people in the process
• Browse and sign up to our range of webinars, which explore key elements of the nature park programme

If for any reason your school isn’t able to take part in the grants programme, please let us know.

At the end of each financial year you have planned expenditure, we will send you a form to report your grant expenditure to the funder, the Department for Education. You should keep track of what you spend the grant on in each of the expenditure categories in preparation for this report. The deadline to complete is midday on Thursday 3 July 2025. You may want to use the example spreadsheet provided at the end of the checklist resource.

Some schools will also be asked to send a more detailed expenditure report including their receipts and invoices. You should keep all the receipts and invoices for your grant expenditure. The deadline to complete is midday on Thursday 3 July 2025.

All settings will also be sent a post-grant survey in the summer term. This is not an expenditure survey but will cover your experience as a grantee and your project outcomes.

Go to the Application portal, select the Reporting button, find the form in the table, select the three little dots on the right side, select Complete Form.