How a College does No Mow May

How big is the green space?

There are different locations of green space around the campus, all of the areas would equal approximately 200m². The locations include the edge of car parks, ditches, the boundaries of large lawn areas, beneath trees. On a campus like ours, leaving edges a little wilder, blurs the boundaries between the wider estate and our campus areas, enabling the campus and countryside around it to feel like one.

Please tell us what made you take up No Mow May?

All of us in the team are in this career for the nurturing of plants and a passion for the environment. Being part of No Mow May gave us credence to the work we are trying to do on the campus, increasing wildlife diversity across the campus.

It gives us power to be able to use the resources provided by Plantlife to endorse the work we do, this isn’t something the Grounds and Gardens team wanted to do because they liked the idea, but a national initiative with a scientific basis.

In a public location such as ours, we can raise the profile of the campaign to a larger audience, hopefully inspiring others to do the same in their own spaces.

What are your future plans for the space?

The areas will need managing later in the year to ensure that the grass species don’t out compete the floral species. Around the end of August, depending on the species present, we will cut areas, leaving seed to drop in a floral meadow before clearing the arisings so they don’t decompose and raise fertility rates in the soil to the benefit of the grass species.

Some areas we won’t cut at all and leave as long grass and dead stems to provide seed source for birds, a place for invertebrates and arachnids to hibernate and be safe from predation. We won’t cut these areas till later in the following year, so fallen grass can be used by field voles and possibly even harvest mice for nesting.

The over wintering areas are left on rotation, again so that the grass doesn’t become dominant, blocking light to the soil surface for wildflower species to germinate.

In the spaces that are more grass species heavy, we will carry out a hard scarification and over seed with a general wildflower mix suited for the aspect and soil conditions of the site. Growing wildflowers from plugs is also another option that we will look to undertake in populating areas with more flowering species.

Were there any challenges you faced?

In the beginning, I probably went too wild for some peoples tastes and had to rein this back so that areas looked more under control and managed.

A simple way to achieve this was where we could, we would mow a perimeter to the areas – sub consciously those walking by assume that the green space is being cared and maintained, just by having a defined edge.

Going back to the human need for neatness, embedded in some of us over generations a neatly mown edge shows off and frames the green space you are managing for nature.

Would you recommend this to others and why?

I would 100% recommend others to do this. There a number of different green spaces across the campus we have adopted into the campaign. These have been strategically chosen for a various reasons:

• Provide connectivity/nature corridors through the campus – whether you are an invertebrate or small mammal, there will be areas of safe passage away from predation.
• Carbon sequestration – research tells us that grassland areas are more reliable than forests at sequestering carbon, where they store it in roots and the soil.
•  Natural Flood Management – we’ve allowed the vegetation and grass to grow up along a hedgerow ditch. When we get heavy downpours of rain, the vegetation slows the rate of discharge further downstream, reducing the risk of flooding neighbouring buildings and land. By doing this we’ve found we’ve created habitat for small mammals and see flora appearing such as Sweet Violet and St. John’s perforate where we hadn’t have otherwise.