Looking back at 2025
It has been a fantastic and exceptionally busy year for the Ranger Programme.
Our community has welcomed 80 new Rangers this year, with 20 wonderful folks from Hounslow and Ealing joining our first ever Hounslow Borough cohort back in May, and 64 new Rangers joining us in our November Induction.
It’s been really interesting to see the benefits of building a Borough based cohort in Hounslow. We’ve been inspired to watch the Rangers there show up for each other’s events, support each other and collaborate – all in their collective work to make their borough greener and wilder and connect their neighbours to nature.
This Autumn we had 84 Ranger applications with very little advertising, many of those folks had been waiting for us to open up to new applicants. 64 of those applicants were offered places. The majority of those 20 who weren’t offered a place still had great ideas and plans – we suggested to them that they start building meaningful relationships in their local community and apply again a little further down the line.
It was an absolute joy to have 50 of those new rangers together in a room for our induction in November. We spent the day getting to know each other, understanding the Ranger programme and creatively visioning our projects, mapping out what the Ranger Programme could offer to help everyone thrive, and we are now building our 2026 training plan in response to this. Our new cohort is amazing, we are so happy to have them on board and its given the whole programme a huge energetic boost! The icing on the cake was a beautiful tree walk on the Churchill Gardens estate with tree guide Paul Wood.
Ranger at induction Ranger Kai (Hounslow) Rangers at Churchill Gardens induction
Like our fantastic long-term Rangers, our new cohorts continue to do a wide range of incredible projects – let’s take a moment to shine a spotlight on a few of our 2025 newbies:
Hounslow born and raised poet and creative, Ranger Kai is a swimming teacher by day and runs The Soup Kitchen charity. Poetry in the Park is his series of spoken word poetry events in Hounslow designed to celebrate nature, amplify local voices, and strengthen community connections to the outdoors. In 2025 his events brought people across the community to the parks of Heston to connect with each other and nature through poetry.
Ranger Nancy’s pocket parks have seen volunteers help plant small areas of de-paved pavement with drought-tolerant, perennial and native plants to create green areas beside the roadway that will enhance the locality, attract pollinators and be a focus for residents, passers-by and local schoolchildren to observe seasonal changes.
Ranger Cherelle is a qualified medical herbalist, holistic health educator, and workshop facilitator who is passionate about helping people reconnect to nature and the outdoors and to the wisdom of medicinal plants, public health, and food justice. Cherelle has led walks for organisations like Black Girls Hike and Level Up London in collaboration with Putting Down Routes, a project which seeks to increase visibility from under-represented groups on the North Downs Way National Trail.
Developing our Ranger programme offerings has been of the utmost importance for the whole community. We now offer a seasonal programme which provides training and community building opportunities across the year, alongside our field trips which take our Rangers into nature for a day of connection and inspiration – with plans in the new year to have field trips visiting rivers in the South Downs to learn about caring for our waterways, a rewilding education day at Tolworth with Citizen Zoo and many more.
If being part of the Ranger community and getting involved in our programming sound good to you then register your interest here for our 2026 cohort. We will be taking a small group onboard next March and a larger cohort next Autumn and we’d love to have you.
