No Mow May, liberate your lawns!

Posted by Devon Partnership Trust in #ProudofDPT, Mental health, News on 22nd May, 2023

No Mow May is an annual campaign calling on all garden owners and green space managers not to mow during May to provide a space for nature. Since the 1970s the UK has lost 97% of rich flowering meadow to development. This affects pollinators such as bees and butterflies as they have a scarcer supply of rich food in the form of wild flowers and grasses.

It doesn’t matter how big or small the area left un-mown is. Every little space left to grow wild helps to improve nature. Leaving small areas of lawn to grow will allow the wildflowers to thrive, providing pollinators with a feast. It will also help tackle pollution by capturing carbon below ground, all with the added advantage of looking fantastic and smelling wonderful. If you have no lawn, create a mini wildlife haven in a pot or two.

Plantlife, who head up the No Mow May movement, have a page dedicated to the wildlife you can can spot on your lawns during May. Find further information here.

We will be taking part in No Mow May where practical to do so. We are working with our contractor, Mitie, to leave areas untended throughout the month. The pictures below show where areas of lawn have been left wild at our Franklyn Hospital site.

Areas of un-mown grass left wild for No Mow May

In January we also received over 600 trees from NHS Forest which have been planted at a selection of our sites. The NHS Forest inspires and supports healthcare sites in transforming their green space for health, wellbeing and biodiversity.

The trees are all native species and are one to two years old. We hope they will help transform our green spaces and encourage our staff to use them for their health and wellbeing (getting out at lunch time, for example) and encourage greater biodiversity. NHS Forest have donated two notice boards with detail about the NHS Forest, one has been placed on the main road at our Langdon Hospital site and the other will be placed at New Leaf.

NHS Forest information signs at Langdon Hospital

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No Mow May, liberate your lawns!

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