Verge Maintenance

Roadside verges, train embankments and cuttings, sundry bits of land someone's just forgotten, all these are valued by those who know as places mostly free from human interference. Wildlife in the form of flowers and insects, sometimes small mammals, learn to thrive outside the blight of management.

Last year the Streets Ahead programme came along numerous roads on the outskirts of Sheffield, inside the land referred to as a national park, and sprayed weedkiller at the base of walls leaving the ugly brown stains of dead plants conspicuous to all who travelled this way. Other parts of the verges were mown early in the year. Previous years the more relaxed management had allowed many wild flowers to bloom.  Eventually some officers with relevant jobs in conservation and the city council, responding to complaints from the public, let it be known that they had struck some kind of agreement with the highways people. Cutting would be done in a new way and weedkiller avoided.

We can now see the difference. No brown stains and a wide swathe of short mown grass alongside the road; a narrow area further back has been allowed to go its own way, for now.  Some may find this pretty, or perhaps tidy.

Compare with this from August 15th  4 years ago.

This was at the lay-by on the other side of the road.

 It's now just short grass.