Initially, the Hoole Tennis Club team’s focus at the new site was to meet legal requirements, keep it tidy and please the neighbours.
However, as the space came together, the team realised the potential for natural beauty and flourishing biodiversity.
To improve the biodiversity of their new club site, the team:
- Reduced mowing and hedge trimming
- Planted fruit trees, including strawberries, mint, rhubarb, blackcurrant, redcurrant, whitecurrant, raspberries and gooseberries
- Introduced bee-friendly, open-faced flowers
- Engaged with an ecologist to understand how best to care for and enhance the ancient woodland onsite
- Planted 350 trees, with funding from Mersey Forest, prioritising oak trees due to their biodiversity-enhancing qualities
- Planted a 100m wildlife corridor double hedge, with blackthorn, holly, dog rose, hazel, wild cherry and hawthorn, designed to provide food, shelter and security for insects, bees, birds and small creatures
- Installed insect hotels, bird boxes and tables around the site
- Allowed brambles to take over the bunds, providing habitats for birds and other small creatures
These biodiversity actions and embracing ‘benign neglect’ or ‘letting nature do its thing’ also make life much easier for the volunteer maintenance team.
Community and member engagement
The Hoole Tennis Club describe their members as one of their biggest strengths. A quarter of the membership volunteer for the club in some way.
"No-one is taken for granted: we try to thank everyone for everything they do all the time," says the club's chairman, Anthony Wilding.
The club has a whiteboard on prominent display, where members can suggest things or note any issues.
The team find that this helps them pick up on any issues very quickly, and when people see their suggestions being actioned it helps them feel like part of the club.
For the wider community, the club built a new public footpath, including a section through the ancient woodland, providing a nice walk for locals and helping keep them off the roads.
This path also provides a safer walking route for children to the neighbouring primary school. Students from the school use the club grounds for activities and litter pick-up competitions, and the club car park is available for school drop-off each morning.
The club also help with the local secondary school’s Duke of Edinburgh Awards programmes, and there is a growing list of combined events with the neighbouring primary school and the parish council.
The club have recently ‘twinned’ with a local retirement village, where the residents are offered discounted memberships, a small garden patch to tend to, or simply an enjoyable day out.
Broader sustainability actions
Hoole Tennis Club have taken the following actions to reduce their environmental impact:
- Converted all floodlit courts to LED lights, reducing energy costs
- Closely monitor clubroom heating
- Installed automatic stops on all taps
- Provide members and organised visitors with details of cycle-safe routes and secure cycle racks
- Pay for all rubbish to be sorted and recycled
- Compost all green waste
- Collect and donate used tennis balls to Brian House Children's Hospice.
The club’s next aim is to install solar panels on the roof and join an energy exchange with three other clubs. The Hoole Tennis Club and one other would be net-producers, while the other two would be net-users.
