Rewilding Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr

Hospitals can be stressful places not only for patients but staff too. ‘Rewilding Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr’ is an initiative to help relieve stress and improve wellbeing at the same time as providing environmental benefits by rewilding the hospital site.

This includes a reduction in stress and negative emotions. It can also help with heart disease conditions and lower rates of obesity and levels of type 2 diabetes. It also provides a social connection and exercise activity benefit to staff and volunteers who help maintain these areas and sow seeds.

NHS Staff have given feedback comments describing how the green spaces. One said it makes them feel “refreshed, recharged and re-energised” and another said it “makes you feel happy and positive”.

Amongst the placed benches and signs for staff around the site, it’s likely for staff and visitors to often see buttercups, oxeye daisies, white campions, bluebells, wild sweet peas, cowslip and your common dandelion.

Encouraging wildflower areas over cultivated land provides biodiversity and an essential food source and habitat. This is especially apparent for pollinators such as bees, of which YYF also has its own hive of bees providing further benefits for the area.

In collaboration with Beeone, a hive also sits on the hospital site, also maintained by Pharmabees team and hospital staff on their breaks and in their spare time. The hive is estimated to hold over 35,000 bees with the intention that the project can be self-sufficient with staff volunteers looking after the wildflowers that feed the bees and the bees themselves.

According to research by the Grassland Trust, grasslands can draw down and store up to 3 tonnes more carbon per hectare (10,000m squared) each year than standard turf.

YYF forms part of the 133 hectares of land used by the health board, presenting a significant example for development towards wellbeing & environmental benefits across Gwent.