No Mow May

Last year the University took part in No Mow May on central campus for the first time. This means central lawns that would normally be cut were left to grow throughout May.

The main objective was bring landscape management for biodiversity to the centre of campus to raise the level of consciousness about biodiversity issues. Often biodiversity projects are pushed to the outskirts of central campus where the majority of the University community never see them. By bringing No Mow May onto central campus we would be put biodiversity action right in front of people.

Our secondary objectives were to seek a boost in vegetation and invertebrate diversity on central campus in line with the national No Mow May findings; and we wanted to test the assumption that we would face a lot of resistance to a project like this where we would be changing how central campus looked and the expectation for it to look neat and tidy.

No Mow May is Plantlife’s annual campaign calling on gardeners and landowners to leave the mowers in the shed and allow flowers to grow. May is a crucial month for flowering plants allowing them to get established and provide nectar for pollinators and other invertebrates. Just 8 dandelion flowers are enough to produce the nectar sugar needed by a bumblebee each day.

We already leave large areas of our grasslands throughout Spring and Summer as hay and wildflower meadows. We have publicly available plans on our grassland management and future plans for boosting the diversity of these existing meadows. No Mow May goes beyond this in asking people to leave traditionally mown lawns throughout May to boost the available food for pollinators and other invertebrates in this specific time. These lawns are amenity lawns that are usually mown fortnightly throughout this period.

Engaging Students

With the project being so visible we sought to engage students to use their skill sets and apply them to this on campus project.

Conservation students were asked to used their surveying skills to collect data on species richness over the course of the project, and the Conservation Society took this on as an extra-curricula activity.

The signs that communicated the project were created by a Graphic Design student from KSAP as part of their Learning Enhancement Week. A group of graphic design students were briefed on the biodiversity crisis facing invertebrates, what No May was and what the University would be doing. They then produced a series of designs with the winning design being placed around central campus. The signs included a QR code allowing people to find out more and provide direct feedback to the project.

Feedback

We received feedback through three predominant channels: direct emails, submissions through the feedback form and verbally at events, meetings and informal exchanges.

In a six-week period starting from the beginning of May we received and had 98 exchanges about the project. Of the 98, 95 responses were wholly positive, 2 mixed and 2 negative.

The positive responses echoed one another with the same themes coming up:

  • Proud to see their university taking part in No Mow May
  • Found the effect beautiful and calming during exam term
  • Pleased to see more insects and appreciation of nature on central campus
  • Requests to extend the timescale or space

Of the 2 mixed responses, there was some confusion why some areas of campus were still being mown; and that whilst supportive they thought central campus looked scruffy. The 2 negative responses were additionally that it looked scruffy and that it should be elsewhere on campus; and that it was only being done for cost saving measures.

Overall the visual impact was well received by the vast majority. There was a sense that the campus felt fuller and more alive. Respondents were noting down different species that they had seen and a common theme was that they were pleased and proud to see their University taking part.

 “Excellent to be part of a University that is looking out for nature. Requires joined up thinking between the sustainability team and estates team. Well done University of Kent.”

Reputationally, the impact of doing something so visual that our staff, students and visitors can see and directly engage with is significant. The cost of this project was extremely low so the impact of the numbers of people that engaged with the project as well as those that just would have walked past and see it is huge and not easily replicated by other engagement activities. People have a desire to see the University being proactive and visible in this space

A lesson learned was that our signage and pre-information could have been better as to inform people which lawns are part of No Mow May. A common question and concern was that people saw mowing happening in other areas (namely courtyards and banks) during May. If we are to do this again we need to look at how we communicate which lawns are included.

We also had people ask why we cut it in June. Why were the lawns not left to grow throughout summer as much evidence shows is better for wildlife?

It was always the intention to cut the No Mow May lawns back in June as the project title suggests. That doesn’t mean the rest of our grasslands were cut at the same time. Only those three lawns in the trial – Registry lawn, front library lawn and side library lawn.

Whilst many of us would like to see the lawns left longer there was some concern about how central campus would look after another month or 2, and how much work it would take to restore the lawns over the winter. Amenity/short cut lawns do serve a purpose on campus for people to sit and gather, as well as for events and recreation. We will never get it perfectly right for everyone in this regard but hopefully our work beyond central campus can demonstrate our commitment to biodiversity beyond May.

Biodiversity

As part of the trial the Conservation Society carried out a basic vegetation survey at the beginning and end of the month where they measured sward height and species diversity.

Overall, there was an increase in diversity across the lawns surveyed with the exception of Eliot Lawn which was the control lawn and still mown throughout May. This meets our expectation but there were also some interesting surprises that we were not expecting.

Our amenity grassland is much more diverse than it looks, over the course of 4 weeks 41 different species were surveyed without any additional seeding or work, just the absence of mowing. The central campus can be very valuable as a food source if allowed to grow longer. Certain species were flowering within the first two weeks before the sward height started to get really long. Supporting these early flowering species by not mowing in these areas so frequently could support invertebrates beyond Now Mow May.

Further data analysis could be done to look at coverage of certain species. Complimentary surveys of invertebrates should be done during future No Mow May projects.

No Mow May 2024

It is our intention to carry out No Mow May again this year incorporating the feedback we received last year. We hope that this can become an annual project that engages people with our wilder campus brought to the central campus.

 

Inspired by nature

Guest blog by Rebecca Smith, Sustainability Champions for Kent Business School.

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Understanding the potential for nature to inspire ideas was the topic of the first Business Start-Up Journey Ideas Hack bootcamp.

Using the Canterbury campus as a living lab, students went into the ancient woodland of Brotherhood Wood, near to the Sibson building, to explore how nature can inspire solutions to problems in the human world, using this problem solving as the basis for starting to develop business ideas.

The bootcamp began with an overview from the University’s Sustainability Coordinator, Emily Mason, on the biodiversity crisis facing the planet. She explained how careful management of the University’s natural capital was trying to counter it. Then, using the woods as their inspiration, students were set the task of developing an idea which would either tackle the issue of biodiversity or of improving mental health.

Ideas included a woodland adoption programme and classrooms based in the woods to promote a closer connection to nature.

In the afternoon, students took part in a further interactive workshop in the Sibson building, generating ideas based on understanding of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and looking at the subject of biomimicry. Biomimicry uses the solutions which animals, plants, and microbes have found to help solve problems in the human world.

They were led through a rapid idea generation session by the ASPIRE’s Innovator in Residence, Jo Pullen, and ASPIRE Project Officer, Rebecca Smith.

The bootcamp on Saturday 24 October followed a successful launch event with a keynote speech by entrepreneur, Mick Jackson, who founded of the multi-million pound global company, Wildhearts. Mick talked about the purpose of ‘business for good’ and the importance of finding your ‘why’.

The Business Start-Up Journey programme is a mix of interactive workshops, mainly online in Teams, real life bootcamps and one-to-one support. Students are guided through the process of starting a business, from finding, developing and testing an idea to creating financial and marketing plans and pitching for investment. The programme, which is philanthropically supported, ends with a pitching competition where student entrepreneurs can win £1000 to help start their business.

What has changed in 35 years?

The original nature trail on the Canterbury campus was devised in 1985 and written by John Kesby and Ian Swingland. Here are the opening paragraphs from the original guide:

“The nature trail around the University’s 300 acre campus, with its magnificent hillside setting overlooking the Cathedral City of Canterbury and the valley of the Great Stour, has been devised for the benefit of its staff and students, members of the local community and of the thousands of people who visit us during the year, be they conference delegates or holiday makers.

The trail combines the opportunity for attractive walks around the grassy slopes, ponds and woodland of the campus with a challenge to discover how much you can see or hear of the abundant wildlife around us. This brochure will guide you to places where you can find nightingales, willow warblers, great spotted woodpeckers and even the occasional kingfisher, to observe damselflies or Essex skippers; to watch out for lizards, newts, three-spinned sticklebacks or voles; to identify parrot wax caps, prickly lettuce, bristly ox tongue or red goosefoot. We hope it will be enjoyed by those who have difficulty putting a name to even the most common flora and fauna. At the same time, we hope it will be of interest to knowledgeable naturalists and of value to parties from the schools of other groups of wildlife enthusiasts.”

Whilst the description of the campus overlooking the Cathedral may still ring true the list of species that could be seen on campus in 1985 would be much shorter today.

In order to map out what we have lost it is useful to fully understand what we had. Thankfully we have a few copies left of the 1985 guide with its detailed species lists. The Sustainability Team will be digitising all of this information so that it will be available to everyone so that as a community we can start to identify what we still have on campus, what is hard to find and what is gone.

Some trends of population decline go far beyond what we control on campus, however, there may be some species that are found locally that we may be able to encourage back through how we manage our campus and connect to habitats beyond our borders.

We would like students, staff and community members to help us with this undertaking by, in the first instance, recording what they spot. Big or small, common or rare we want to know what you have seen and where you have seen it. At the moment we are just asking people email their information into us at sustainability@kent.ac.uk and we will collate it all as a first step to building a clear picture of what we have on campus.

We are also working on rejuvenating the information about the nature trails and rerouting the original trail around some of the new buildings on campus that now block the original route.

If you are interested in this project and want to volunteer your time on this, please do get in touch.

Happy Valentine’s Day to the lunchtime walk

On this chilly February afternoon I took a walk.

I am an advocate for the lunchtime walk. I love a lunchtime walk.

I walk alone, or with a friend. I walk listening to music, in silence, chatting. I have been know to attempt to walk whilst reading a book (not advisable). Ideally I would walk with a dog.

I like to use my whole lunch break to roam the campus and surrounding area then quickly stuff some food in my mouth at my desk. Now this is not ideal for everyone and probably not the best for my digestive system but whether you take a quick 15 popping to the shop and back, or use the full hour like me to explore you are doing wonders for yourself.

The physical and mental health benefits of walking are well documented – from helping your posture, getting your heart beating a little quicker, improving your concentration and reducing stress.

On many a walk I have solved a problem where the solution has alluded me all morning; I have also planned a whole party on a walk; and had one or two (self-proclaimed) bright ideas!  Being away from my desk and more importantly my computer seems to gives my brain room to come up with a more creative approach to a challenge.

Walking during lunch with a friend and colleague means we can catch up on all the non-related work business of the day, put the worlds to right and on this Valentine’s Day probably bemoan or celebrate our love lives (or lack off – delete as appropriate!).

But, with all that said, my favourite walks are the one where I have nothing on my mind and therefore get to spend more time noticing what is actually around me.

You never really know what you will stumble upon. A wigwam in the woods. A fierce battle between two male robins fighting over resources. A lost visitor who is at the completely wrong end of campus!

This is my love letter to the lunchtime walk. Leave your desk, go outside. take a deep breath and go. You do not have to go far for the chance to fall in love with nature everyday.