The Case for Rewilding Your School Grounds

A hot topic at the minute, especially with schools struggling in the recent heat waves – school grounds were designed for a particular use – flat, manageable, easy to supervise, easy to maintain. Tarmac for play. Grass for sports. Flower beds for display. Everything in its place and everything controlled. Rewilding doesn’t always fit that mould though – when we know what we know about the relationship between children and the natural world, about biodiversity loss, about climate adaptation, and about what actually supports learning. This post then is the case for doing something different with your school grounds, not an unmanageable wilderness but making more room for nature, and in doing so, making more room for learning, wellbeing, and the kind of connection to the natural world that every child deserves. This blog will look at what that means, why we should do it, what the challenges are and how we can tackle these head on.

What rewilding actually means for a school

Rewilding can conjure up various images – wolves on hillsides or rivers changing course. In a school context, it means something more modest and more achievable: reducing human management of parts of your grounds and allowing nature to move back in.

In practice this could mean:

Stopping mowing a section of grass and letting it become a wildflower meadow
Planting native hedgerow along a fence line instead of maintaining bare tarmac edges
Installing a small pond, even a container pond, to support amphibians and invertebrates
Leaving log piles and leaf litter in corners for beetles, hedgehogs, and fungi
Creating a small tree canopy where currently there is open ground
Allowing ivy and other climbing plants to establish on walls

None of these requires significant capital expenditure. Most require more willingness to let go of control than money to spend. The challenge is often not practical, but a bit of context and culture.

The learning case for rewilding your school grounds

The evidence for nature-based learning is growing. A University of Exeter study found that children who engage regularly with natural environments show improved concentration, lower stress levels, and stronger social skills. A 2024 review published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society found clear links between engaging with nature and improved physical health, mental health, and personal development in children and young people.

But beyond the wellbeing evidence, there is a simpler curriculum argument. School grounds that contain genuine ecological complexity offer something a classroom never can: unpredictability, multi-sensory experience, and real systems to observe and investigate.

A wildflower patch supports a science lesson on pollination, a maths lesson on data collection, an art lesson on observational drawing, and a geography lesson on ecosystems. A pond supports food chain investigations, seasonal change observations, and the kind of patient, careful watching that is increasingly rare in children’s experience.

The National Education Nature Park, launched by the DfE in 2023, explicitly recognises this. Schools that join the programme record and improve their biodiversity, contributing to a national dataset while building curriculum-connected activities directly into their school grounds. The programme is free. The curriculum connections are extensive.

There is also an equity argument. A 2023 academic review in the journal Environmental Education Research found significant inequity in children’s access to nature, with children in more deprived areas less likely to have access to quality green space outside school. For those children, the school ground may be the most significant natural environment in their lives. What it contains matters.

Worth saying to leadership: For many of our pupils, what is in this school ground is the most significant encounter with nature they will have this week. What we do with it is an equity decision as much as an environmental one.

Common objections to rewilding school grounds

The most common objection to rewilding school grounds is also the most legitimate one: the grounds are used for other things. Playtime. PE. Events. Parents’ car parking at the school fete.

The answer, rather obviously, is not to rewild everything. Think carefully about which parts of your grounds are genuinely needed for active use, and which parts are not.

Most schools have more tarmac and managed grass than they actually use for active play. The corners, the edges, the strip alongside the fence, the patch behind the mobile classroom that no one goes near — these are the places to start. They are not being used for much. They could be doing a great deal.

A zoning approach works well:

tarmac and maintained grass for play, PE, and events. These remain exactly as they are.
areas that can serve both purposes. A wildflower meadow with mown paths through it is accessible and manageable. Raised beds near a classroom can be tended by pupils. A pond with appropriate fencing is both safe and educationally rich.
areas set aside primarily for biodiversity. Log piles, unmown corners, native hedgerow, scrub. Low maintenance, high ecological value, and visible from the rest of the grounds as evidence that the school takes nature seriously.

Starting with the nature zones – the genuinely unused or underused corners – is the lowest-risk approach and often produces the most visible results fastest. A wildflower area that was previously an unused strip of grass can also have a huge impact.

A sensible approach to health and safety

Health and safety is frequently cited as a barrier to nature in school grounds, often without much examination of what the actual risks are.

The Health and Safety Executive is clear on this point: the goal of risk assessment is not to eliminate all risk, but to manage it proportionately. The HSE’s own guidance notes that children need to experience challenge and managed risk as part of healthy development, and that schools should not be so risk-averse that they deprive children of beneficial activities.

In practice, the risks associated with school rewilding are manageable and well understood:

Ponds

A pond is the single most frequently cited safety concern. It is also one of the most ecologically valuable features a school ground can have. The solution is straightforward: appropriate fencing or edging, clear rules about supervised versus unsupervised access, and a risk assessment that documents the controls in place. Many primary schools successfully operate ponds.

Tall vegetation and unmanaged areas

The concern is usually about hidden hazards or pupils entering unsupervised. Clear boundary marking, e.g. a low fence, a line of sleepers, a mown edge – makes it clear to pupils where they can and cannot go. Regular monitoring for hazards like broken glass or animal activity is good practice. A simple site check before outdoor sessions is standard in forest school settings and easily adapted for a school nature area.

Allergens and stinging plants

Nettles, ragwort, and hogweed are the plants most commonly flagged. Hogweed in particular requires management. A site survey before establishing a nature area identifies what is present; specific plants can be removed from areas where pupils will be active. Nettles, meanwhile, are one of the most important plants for caterpillars and biodiversity, local management is the answer here.

Ticks

A genuine consideration in some areas, particularly where deer are present. Simple mitigation: appropriate clothing guidance for outdoor sessions in long vegetation, awareness training for staff, and a clear procedure for tick checks and removal. The NHS has clear guidance.

The broader point is that a risk-benefit assessment, weighing the genuine risks against the genuine benefits, will almost always comes down in favour of nature in school grounds. The benefits to learning, wellbeing, biodiversity, and climate adaptation are substantial.

Conversations with leadership

Most rewilding projects in schools require someone to make a case. Here are the most common objections and how to approach them.

‘It will look untidy and reflect badly on the school.’

This is about perception, not reality. The answer is presentation. A wildflower area with a neat hand-painted sign explaining what it is and why it is there reads very differently from an area that simply looks unmaintained. Involve pupils in making the case, if you have an eco group the members can explain to parents what the wildflower patch is for. When visitors ask about it, it becomes a point of pride rather than an embarrassment.

‘We don’t have the budget.’

Most rewilding interventions are low-cost or free. Stopping mowing costs nothing and saves grounds maintenance budget. Native plug plants are inexpensive. Log piles are free. The National Education Nature Park provides free resources and support. The Wildlife Trusts and RSPB both offer school grounds support schemes. Grants are available through organisations including the National Lottery’s Community Fund, the People’s Postcode Lottery, and local environmental funds. The argument that budget is a barrier usually applies to the most ambitious interventions and shouldn’t stop you getting started.

‘Who is going to maintain it?’

This is the most important practical question – the honest answer is that well-designed nature areas require less maintenance than equivalent areas of managed grass or formal planting, not more. But it does require someone to take ownership – ideally a member of staff supported by an eco group, and ideally with a connection to a local wildlife organisation who can advise. Building maintenance responsibilities into the eco group’s remit, and connecting them with external support, is a sustainable model.

‘The children need space to run.’

They do. And that space should be protected. The case for rewilding is not that running space should be reduced – it is that the parts of the school grounds currently doing nothing should be doing something. A zone-based approach makes this explicit: active space is ring-fenced, and the nature space comes from what is currently unused. It’s not a competition between nature and play.

‘What does Ofsted think about this?’

The direction of travel from Ofsted – and from the DfE more broadly, through the Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy – is clear. Schools that take their environment seriously, involve pupils meaningfully in sustainability, and connect their grounds to the curriculum are doing exactly what both frameworks encourage. A nature-rich school ground is not a distraction from Ofsted preparation. For many schools, it is part of it.

Where to start

If you are starting from scratch, here is a practical sequence:

Walk your grounds with fresh eyes. Where is genuinely unused? Where does nature already have a foothold? Where do pupils currently gravitate?
Do a simple biodiversity audit. The National Education Nature Park has free recording tools. Even a basic survey of what you have is a useful starting point and a curriculum activity in itself.
Identify one small intervention and do it well. A wildflower strip, a bug hotel, a log pile. Do it visibly, explain it clearly, involve pupils. Build from there.
Connect with support. Your local Wildlife Trust, the RSPB, Learning through Landscapes, and the National Education Nature Park all offer guidance and in some cases direct support.
Map the curriculum connections. Before you present to leadership, know what the nature area will be used for, by which year groups, linked to which curriculum content.
Write a simple zoning plan. Show leadership which areas remain for active use, which will serve both purposes, and which will become nature areas. Make it clear that the play space is not being reduced.
Document everything. A before-and-after record of biodiversity, curriculum use, and pupil response is valuable evidence for governors, for Ofsted, and for the next time someone asks whether it is worth it.

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notyetzero supports schools with carbon literacy training, climate action planning, and curriculum development — including support for biodiversity and grounds development. Get in touch.

Related reading on notyetzero.com

Beyond the Biscuit Tin: Getting the Most From Your School Eco Group

How to connect your school eco group to meaningful activity — including grounds management and biodiversity projects.

Your Climate Action Plan

The biodiversity section of the notyetzero CAP guide covers school grounds development in detail, with links and a downloadable template.

Climate Science in Primary School

The curriculum hooks in primary science and geography that school grounds biodiversity work connects to directly.