Last year I stumbled across this wonderful initiative by PlantLife, a charity dedicated to the conservation of wild plants, called the Road Verge Campaign. With half a million kilometres of road verges in the UK, this is one of the largest semi-natural habitats, one that the campaign aims to preserve. Not only road verges contain precious habitat for wild flowers, pollinators, small mammals and other wildlife, but are a potential corridor to connect other habitats, such woodland and meadows. As I became aware of the campaign, my local landowner (Beeswax by Sir James Dyson) started to cut the road verges around our house almost every two weeks. I should add that this is public land, but it is cut for road safety even if we have some of the quietest roads in the county (and country) as we live in an unclassified country lane. Moreover, rather than cut within 2 metres of the road, which are the least important for pollinators, they were cut extensively. Together with our neighbours, we wrote to the business manager who was sympathetic but, despite our efforts, the cuts continued. Possibly this was simply due to a lack of communication with the staff on the ground riding the mowers. Thankfully this year I have only seen the mowers once. Today, on a glorious sunny morning, I decided to take some pictures of my local walk, for 'future reference' as it were. If we all look after our 'local patch' be it garden, allotment, roundabout or road verge, we will make a difference for our dwindling wildlife.
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AuthorGraziella Iossa Archives
August 2023
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