Greening vouchers and wildlife habitats in urban areas

The City of Montpellier supports you in your greening project. “Greening vouchers” are available free of charge upon registration with the city to help achieve five specific goals:

• Beautify your street and transform your neighborhood. It only takes a small gesture to brighten everyone’s day. By making the street more colorful or flower-filled, you can create a little corner of nature right in your neighborhood.
• Build connections with your neighbors. Greening your street is also a way to foster community bonds—an opportunity to discover that your neighbors are also interested in this kind of initiative. Making your street greener is great; doing it together is even better!
• Promoting biodiversity. By adding more flowers to your facade or balcony, you provide food or shelter for many animal species. Nature has a place in the city, too.
• Reducing the urban heat island effect. In city centers, temperatures can soar during heat waves. Plants absorb water from the soil and release it into the air. It’s an eco-friendly way to cool the streets.
• Purify the air we breathe. Plants act as natural air filters. They help reduce air pollution, which is a major health concern for everyone.

4 types of greening vouchers:

• Micro-greening: This involves drilling a hole in the pavement at the base of a wall to install a growing medium and plant a climbing plant—provided by the City—that you selected during registration.

  Micro-landscaping cannot be installed within 50 cm of any type of utility network (electrical boxes, telephone cables, etc.).

• Tree-base greening: This transforms the ground area at the base of an existing tree into a small urban garden. The City installs potting soil at the base of the tree to raise the ground level and has wooden planks installed to contain it.

  This must be located on public property and not on private property.

• Tree donations: The case of trees is unique in that it does not necessarily involve public space. The City simply gives you the tree so that you can plant it on the private property of your choice. 

  If you submit your request as a condominium association, you may request up to 15 trees. Otherwise, the City limits the donation of fruit trees to one per season.

• The Mediterranean hedge: The goal of this initiative is to increase the presence of vegetation within the city, particularly the networks of hedges that serve as habitats and ecological corridors (facilitating movement) for wildlife. 

• Adopt a Greening Voucher: Greening vouchers for micro-flowering projects that are no longer maintained by their owners due to a move or other reasons end up unused. 

  To address this, the city is offering the opportunity to adopt these micro-flowering areas: this is the “Adopt a Voucher” program.