Leicester’s grassland strategy shows how diverse approaches to natural land management support biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and make cities more pleasant places to be.
Since launching its Grassland Strategy 2023-2033, about 13.5% of all grassland in Leicester, UK, is managed as pollination or meadow grassland – habitat that promotes an increase of pollinator species. That’s about 130 hectares (1.3km2) of thriving habitats within the city.
Formed in response to Leicester City Council declaring a climate emergency, the strategy supports the local authority’s commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030: the plant biodiversity of urban grasslands has been proven to be highly effective at sequestering CO2.
Just two years after the grassland strategy was introduced, 105 parks and greenspace sites accommodating 380 separate areas are drawing down an estimated additional 105 tonnes of carbon per year. On top of this, it’s believed that there’s another 9,054 tonnes stored in the soil below undisturbed grassland across the city.
The question is, how has Leicester achieved this much just one-fifth of the way into its decadelong strategy?
Leicester’s Green Spaces
The climate emergency declaration reflects a recognition for a need to change.
As Parks & Open Spaces Operational Manager for Leicester City Council, Victoria Hudson has led implementation of the city-wide grassland strategy since the beginning.
She manages the Park Services team, which maintains all council-owned green estate across the city. That covers far more than just the city’s 190+ parks and green open spaces: this vast profile includes roadside verges, traffic islands, housing estates, grass sports facilities, and local nature reserves, while other personnel within the Parks & Open Spaces Service maintain educational playing fields, the city’s trees and woodlands, and bereavement sites. Altogether it’s a portfolio that covers about 73 km2, an impressive 22% of the city.
The Urban Grassland Strategy
But Leicester has experienced a decline in biodiversity, which follows a general trend: in three decades, starting in 1990, the UK’s urban areas expanded by about 3,376 km2 but grasslands declined by 7,668 km2. Since 1980, the UK has lost about a quarter of its pollinators – like bees and butterflies – which are required to help vegetation germinate.
Like many cities, Leicester’s management of grassland historically prioritised aesthetics. Maintenance favoured an ornamental mowing regime and extensive use of pesticides to control weeds, resulting in a manicured presentation
The grassland strategy would relax the maintenance of the city’s grassland, enabling biodiversity to thrive once again. It’s a huge undertaking, with plenty of challenges to consider:
- Identifying the most appropriate sites to help biodiversity establish and thrive
- Deciding which grassland areas should be adopted for relaxed mowing
- Knowing where to retain a traditional ornamental finish, such as sites of public amenity
- Creating the right mix of grassland meadows and pollination patches
- Establishing connectivity, or “pollination corridors” for species to move between existing biodiversity-rich locations such as the city’s parks and nature reserves
- Introducing more sustainable grassland maintenance practices
- Reducing carbon emissions throughout the maintenance processes
- Maximising carbon sequestration
- Minimising use of chemical weed control
- Educating citizens about the need for the strategy
- Communicating which areas would be in different stages of growth due to being mowed less frequently.
While amenity grounds remain largely unchanged, maintenance of naturalised grounds now employs a mix of sustainable maintenance practices, much of it a “relaxed cut” – another name for low frequency mowing. The needs of each site determines how this is handled:
Deliberate Seeding
- Perennial grass meadows (cut and lift): grassy areas lacking in biodiversity are seeded to encourage new species to establish long-term. Growing vegetation draws down more carbon. When mowed, the cuttings are removed.
- Annual flowers: appropriate grassland areas, such as parks and verges along roads, are planted with all kinds of flowers that make for a colourful display. This encourages pollinators and the stunning display is popular with citizens.
- Flowering lawn: planting hardy wildflowers may be cut up to six times annually and still create highly diverse habitats.
Mowing Regimes
- One-cut: formerly species-poor naturalised grassland is mowed or cut by hand once a year. The cuttings are left in place, providing new refuges for invertebrates. A single cut minimises the carbon footprint of maintenance.
- Cut and life: as above, except cuttings are removed to prevent them rotting, which would increase soil fertility and limit flora diversity.
- Biennial cut: also carried out on species-poor patches, but these are cut just once every two years to allow nature to create a high value biodiversity count of plants and small animals.
This framework boosts biodiversity not by attempting to increase the amount of green space in the city but by transforming more of what exists into high-quality and diverse managed grassland. Some of it has been completely rewilded.
Biodiversity Net Gain
Coincidentally, the grassland strategy came at just the right time to benefit from the introduction of the UK government’s Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) legislation.
BNG enshrines protections for nature in development projects in England, which the Royal Town Planning Institute calls “one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world”.
Construction managers and local authorities are required to leave wildlife habitats 10% better off than they were before work commenced. This can be either on- or off-site, or as a last resort they can buy credits that are invested in government-backed biodiversity projects elsewhere.
Based in the planning department, John Bristow is Leicester City Council’s senior nature conservation officer. As one of three ecologists at the municipality, he advises infrastructure projects in Leicester on how to implement BNG and has seen how sites participating in the grassland strategy provide developers with an opportunity to fulfil their BNG requirements. In a helpful show of symbiosis, this in turn compliments further implementation of the grassland strategy throughout the city.
Data-Driven Strategy
That almost makes these successes seem like luck, but that’s far from the truth. The grassland strategy was informed by an incredible amount of data – and Leicester City Council committed the time necessary to gather the information it needed.
Victoria says that it took twelve months to evaluate what species were already present in “all 190 parks, gardens, and open spaces in the city”, including housing estates, highways, and nature reserves.
Over the second year, that information was used to map which of the city’s green spaces could be managed differently to benefit biodiversity and improve Leicester’s poor air quality – another advantage that vegetation provides.
The mapping process identified potential nature-friendly blue-green corridors which could encourage plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, and insects to thrive and migrate between naturalised sites.
Leicester’s “eight-and-a-half-mile riverside corridor [which runs] from one end of the city to the other” is a perfect example of this, Victoria tells us. Another, surprisingly enough, is the city’s highway network.
Leicester’s Bee Roads
The city’s busiest ring roads and commuter routes have been turned into a network of Bee Roads, carefully managed grass and wildflower habitats that support biodiversity, and especially pollinators.
It’s a very visible way of responding to climate change. Each summer the Bee Roads bloom into a burst of colour, which helps to soften these otherwise heavily built urban environments. Almost 45% of the city’s flora species can now be found along these routes.
The Bee Roads have become the recognisable face of the grassland strategy. Accompanying a very successful social media campaign, branded signs sporting the Bee Road emblem have been installed at prominent locations involved in the grassland strategy to raise awareness of where the work is being undertaken.
Image credit: Facebook / Leicester City Council
The Costs of a Grassland Strategy
Leicester takes the education element of the strategy very seriously, having even produced a short video to communicate the whats and whys of the new grassland management scheme.
It remains an ongoing challenge though. Victoria says that two years in, the council still receives complaints from customers who mistakenly assume the maintenance team has overlooked mowing an area on their rounds. For some it’s a genuine enquiry, but a few preferred the neat aesthetic of the ornamental finish that used to be applied.
There’s often a misconception that the council’s motivation for a relaxed cut is to save money, but our CityChangers confirm that this isn’t the case: any reduced spending is consumed by removing the cuttings after mowing the grassland meadow areas.
Leicester Environmental Volunteers
Managed grassland also entails selective hand-weeding, which is time-consuming and requires some knowledge about which species to keep and which need to go. To help with this, Leicester City Council Parks Services has developed an award-winning community programme they call Leicester Environmental Volunteers.
Since the grassland strategy was signed into effect, more than 200 citizens “have given 638.5 hours of their time to undertake selective hand weeding, scything, re-seeding, and surveying” of the city’s wildflower sites, Victoria says. This clears the way for the right plant and animal species to flourish in the city’s grasslands.
The volunteers are also involved in a really important citizen science project. They are “undertaking what’s called ‘fit counts’,” John informs us, which are “basically very simplified insect surveys”. Although too early to see a definite change in patterns yet, these 10-minute spot checks will eventually provide enough data to indicate the grassland strategy’s impact on pollinator populations.
“A fit count is really straightforward – it’s literally box ticking,” he explains. “But it also helps the volunteers understand why they’re out doing a bloody awful job, like pulling weeds.”
During one count, the volunteers identified 134 unique species along a Bee Road – equal that found in a survey of a Site of Special Scientific Interest in the Leicestershire countryside.
Video credit: Leicester City Council
Advice for Writing a Grassland Strategy
So, where should other cities who want to replicate Leicester’s successes start? We asked Victoria and John for their top tips.
Stay Flexible
The best grassland management does not come from rigid guidelines but from an intimate understanding of the various habitats the city hosts.
Ecologists like John are essential in identifying the best way to enhance biodiversity, but maintenance workers should be trained and empowered to make a call to deviate from the mowing schedule when appropriate. The day after a heavy rainfall would not be ideal to cut grasses and lift clippings, for example.
Beyond the Bail
Nutrient-rich soil is not good for grassland, so this needs to be controlled. Traditional bailing is the best way to collect cuttings and still allow seeds to drop. Clippings that are removed can be given away. Except that they are often marred by litter and dogs’ mess, “only then to have to put those bails through green waste recycling because they’re contaminated and can’t be used as animal feed,” Victoria explains. “With the best will in the world, you can litter pick long grass over and over again, but you’ll still miss litter caught up in the long grass.”
Leicester has modernised the process with a foraging machine, which cuts, lifts, and spins the grasses, spreading seeds similar to how traditional bailing would. This doesn’t solve the issue of contaminants but does reduce the human hours needed to complete the three-step process.
Understanding, Communication, Education
“Be prepared for complaints, certainly in the first couple of years,” Victoria warns, “until people realise what it is that you’re doing.”
Victoria is sympathetic to the customers who prefer the verges near to residential properties to have an ornamental cut but says that the success of the grassland strategy relies on being “steadfast in your commitment to change”.
Creating Thriving Urban Grasslands: Key Takeaways
Benefits:
- Properly managed grassland can draw down considerable amounts of carbon dioxide, helping cities meet net zero targets.
- Cities do not necessarily need to create additional green space but think about how to use what exists more effectively.
- Changes to grassland management start conversations which help educate stakeholders about climate change.
Challenges:
- Relaxed mowing does not come cost-free; city leaders should understand that this prioritises biodiversity and net zero efforts, not budgets.
- To maintain their commitment and motivation, we need to show volunteers that their hard work contributes to change for the better.
- Complaints will surge in the early days of a relaxed mowing regime; authorities must be prepared to weather the negative feedback.
How to get started:
- Take time to collect the data required to identify the right locations for new forms of naturalised grass management – even if it takes years.
- Form cross-departmental alliances to share expert knowledge and inform a strategy that has the most impact for biodiversity
- Consider multi-channel communications as part of the strategy, both on- and offline – the more inclusive the conversation, the more support it will gain.