In the spring of 2022, a blooming blanket of wildflowers will break up the predictable monotony of an industrial area of Herning. Midtgaard Farver, a local paint supply store, has decided that a 3000 m2 grassed lawn will become wilfully wild to help contribute to the municipality’s biodiversity. Meet owner and managing director, Peter Bagterp.

It was a coincidence that Peter Bagterp got his idea for improving biodiversity in Herning. Peter had just become a member of Bæredygtig Herning and often thought about how shoddy the large lawn outside his paint store looked. “We own half the lawn, and the municipality owns the other half,” he explains. “And we never mowed it at the same time, so it never really looked very good.”

At an event with a group of business owners and an employee from Bæredygtig Herning, a discussion of converting the lawn into a field of wildflowers where bees and insects could thrive came up. “We are very interested in how we can do something sustainable in our little part of the world, and the idea of having a rainbow of colours in front of a paint store fit perfectly! So I was all-in from the very start,” Peter says.

Bæredygtig Herning helped connect Midtgaard Farver with Biodiversity experts from the company Let It Bee. Together, they created a plan for transforming the lawn, which involved replacing the rich soil with a sandier variant and choosing the right types of flowers so that the new field wouldn’t be overrun by grasses and thistles.

“It was a good process, one in which Bæredygtig Herning helped every step of the way, and the municipality was open. I am proud to live in a city with sustainable ambitions because we can’t wait for all decisions to be made at the highest levels. We must take personal responsibility. We are already doing trash sorting, we have LED lights and that kind of thing in our company, but I am looking forward to using Bæredygtig Herning to share experiences and be inspired to do even more. How to translate the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to concrete projects? That is just one thing I’d like to discuss in the future.”