What are we?

It all started with the automatic lawn mowers.. 

The Rewilding campus or Grønne Gløs project consists of a number of students and professors at the Department of Biology and the Department of Design at NTNU in Trondheim. In 2022, the master student at the time, Markus Andersen at Natural Resources Management, walked thorugh the park on a sunny autumn day, alarmed to see that the robot lawn mowers had taken over. Not only are mowers dangerous for insects and mammals like groundhogs, but they make sure that the lawn's life consists millimeter-short grass, and nothing else. Markus' thought led to multiple discussions of whether the park was biodiverse and engaging at all - which we concluded it was not. We wanted to do something, but also have fun. All we needed was a bit of funding!

Fremtidens Campus had our backs

Through funding by Fremtidens Campus, we managed to start up a bunch of projects and initiatives. Without their support, we would have little to show for. We were able to dig out our garden, GløsHagen and add in vegetables, herbs and flowers. The funding has also taken shape based on several bachelor's and master's theses in design and biology. We look forward to making the local environment on campus wilder and greener, with tight cooperation with Driftsavdelingen at NTNU.

Why and how?

One of our overall aims is provide opportunities to engage with nature in an urban area. Students, employees, neighbours and park visitors could all benefit of stress-relieving and engaging activities in their immediate environment. Engaging with nature can sometimes be hard to prioritize, especially during exam-periods and around deadlines. Meanwhile, the more immediate nature is, the easier it is to engage. That is why we deliberately want to increase the usability of the park, while also providing homes to birds, insects and plants. All of our initiatives are based on volunteer work, as we dig, mowe, plan and harvest in our free-time or have active breaks in-between work and studies.