National Education Nature Park grant

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

The Department for Education will continue to review future funding opportunities. The funding page of the National Education Nature Park website will provide the latest updates.

The application form opens on Monday 1 September 2025 and will close by 5pm on Wednesday 11 February 2026 at the latest. However, it may close earlier, so settings are strongly advised to submit their applications well before this deadline to guarantee an award. You must have spent your grant and submitted your expenditure report by Friday 1 May 2026. If you are unable to meet this deadline, we advise that you do not apply for the grant.

The application form opens on Monday 1 September 2025 and will close by 5pm on Wednesday 11 February 2026 at the latest. However, it may close earlier, so settings are strongly advised to submit their applications well before this deadline to guarantee an award. To apply for your grant, you need to be registered with Nature Park, have completed your site boundary and have started mapping the habitats on your site. The application form asks for evidence that these Nature Park activities have taken place with your learners, so you should start the application early enough to complete them.

You will also need to decide how you will use the grant and it is recommended that you have chosen your contractors or suppliers in advance. We suggest allowing a four-week turnaround to ensure this process isn’t rushed.

You can apply for up to £5,000. The grant is non-competitive. You must have spent your grant and submitted your expenditure report by Friday 1 May 2026.

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 £5,000. You should only request the exact amount you know you will spend.

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. We do not require any match funding.

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 2025 about the grants programme and about the Nature Park. You can use part of the grant to pay for expert help and guidance. See the Find help and local expertise page on the Nature Park website.

The Find help and local expertise page will also tell you how to contact your regional Nature Park team, who can provide free general advice on your project and how to embed it within the curriculum.

We strongly 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. You cannot use the 2026 summer holidays to spend your grant; the grant must be spent by Friday 1 May 2026
• The expenditure deadline is Friday 1 May 2026. 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 £5,000 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. We do not send remittance advice.
The grant must be spent and expenditure reports submitted by Friday 1 May 2026. 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 expenditure reports submitted by you by Friday 1 May 2026, 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 2026, 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 can be found from November 2025 by going to the Application Portal and selecting the Reporting button.

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.

We strongly recommend you use the format of the example spreadsheet provided at the end of the checklist resource.

No, the grant must be fully spent and all expenditure reports submitted by Friday 1 May 2026, including any payments to contractors. Before applying, you should ensure that you are able to meet this deadline. If you have not spent the grant by 1 May, you will have to return it.

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.

The grant can only be used for capital expenditure, and only for a project that:

• 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 by adding wildflowers.

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

You can spend up to £5,000 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 £1,000 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 to map your site and measure or record biodiversity, pond-dipping kits, wildlife cameras and magnifying tools. This portion of the grant can also fund protective covers and insurance for devices.

You can spend up to £1,000 in total on gardening tools, equipment storage, wet weather gear and gloves and equipment storage.

You can use up to £2,000 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.

For more guidance, see:

• Is this item eligible for grant expenditure?
• Getting started with the National Education Nature Park grant

Please see the grasslands guidance on the Nature Park site. The types of grassland the grant can support is:

• 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 must not use the grant to plant trees on existing green space, as this is not eligible expenditure and you may be asked to return the grant. 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.

What you do will depend on the kind of site you have and the results you and your learners get from exploring it using the Nature Park 5-step process. Here are some examples of how other settings have used their grant to add biodiversity:

• Watch other grant project examples

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 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 an hour to fill in, but you should give yourself a few weeks to carry out the required Nature Park activities before you apply. 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.

This webinar takes you through the application form from 13 minutes and 25 seconds in.

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.

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 2025. To be sent the link again, contact [email protected].

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.

Please 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 with a link to the application form.

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

You can spend the grant differently, as long as you only spend on eligible items and keep within the spending limits for each category.
 
If you choose to, you can spend your entire grant on biodiversity enhancements (plants, plant containers, planting material such as compost or topsoil, gravel, water holders and irrigation equipment).

There are limits on the other types of expenditure:

• You can spend up to £1,000 on fieldwork resources
• You can spend up to £1,000 on gardening resources
• You can spend up to £2,000 on specialist support such as contractors or biodiversity experts

See Is this item eligible for grant expenditure? for details of these categories.

You can find your reports from November 2025 by going to the Application Portal and selecting the Reporting button. Find the form in the table, select the three little dots on the right side and select Complete Form.

You must submit your expenditure reporting by Friday 1 May 2026. Plan your grant spending so that it is complete, all your receipts and invoices are collected and your report is submitted to us by Friday 1 May 2026.

Please note: by signing the grant agreement, your school agreed to keep all receipts and invoices for seven years.