This year Stonehouse Town Council will be creating more habitat and encouraging increased biodiversity around the town through a new management regime in some of our open spaces. Some carefully-selected sections of grass in the parks at Meadow Road, Laburnum Walk and Oldends Lane will be left to grow longer than usual over the summer months before being cut as normal in the autumn. This is good news for the bees and other insects and pollinators and helps in our local efforts to tackle the global ecological crisis. In addition, this new management regime will significantly reduce the amount of mowing required every year, helping to reduce emissions and fuel usage and contributing towards our climate change targets. The new meadow areas will be marked out with blue hearts in keeping with the national Blue Campaign: https://bluecampaignhub.com/
Councillor John Parker, Chair of the Stonehouse Community Climate Action Forum, said “it is going to be fantastic to watch these areas develop over the next few months to see what wildflowers emerge and how the community, and wildlife, of Stonehouse will benefit. The new urban meadows will be beautiful to look at and great for the environment, and I hope everyone enjoys them.”