No mow May, June, July….

I share your concern, coming out of our road the vegetation obscures any chance of seeing oncoming traffic.

Yes Maybee, it seems to be happening everywhere. It’s extremely dangerous in many places as visibility is obscured.

Agree MayBee, not a lot to do with the environment and everything to do with cost.
Everywhere looks neglected and is indeed quite dangerous as Maddy and B9 have pointed out.
Standards seem to be dropping in all aspects of life these days.

When my lot come, I tell them, "when you come off the main road, beware of ditches, potholes and uncut hedges".

Fully agree. I live next to a green space "Field", it has trees, lovely hedgerows, about 6 weeks ago I saw a Stag in the "field". But the grass was so long you could loose a small dog in it.

We contacted the local council, local Councillors, asking all please Mow it. We suggested was it now no Mow May, June July, also it's coming up to the children breaking up for the school holiday, occasionally they play football in it,often picnic's.
This long grass makes it impossible, even mentioned the risk of Tic's.

This is the second year this has happened.
I'm pleased to say it worked, got cut about 2 weeks ago, took a Tractor but it look good now.

The situation with the environment is very serious and these weeds are very beneficial to birds, butterflies and bees. The UK has used pesticides for such a long time on limited space that it has decimated the insect population. I prefer the neglect as the next generation will pay the costs of the true neglect of our ecosystem.

Where I live it's exactly the same. Too much overgrown. Council has run out of money to maintain roads, cit grass and hedges, tree branches obscuring road signs. I've never seen our country in such an overgrown untidy state before

Syracute

The situation with the environment is very serious and these weeds are very beneficial to birds, butterflies and bees. The UK has used pesticides for such a long time on limited space that it has decimated the insect population. I prefer the neglect as the next generation will pay the costs of the true neglect of our ecosystem.

Ragwort is dangerous to horses.I’m all for people not cutting their lawns and farmers not cutting the sides of fields and leaving some fallow. In my partners village the hedgerows aren’t been cut back and yet a beautiful meadow that had been kept free of pesticides for generations and had no end of beautiful wild flowers has been turned into a car park. That field was irreplaceable. Thankfully someone has bought a similar field with a view to keeping it as it is. It’s wrong to have road signs obscured.

Syracute

The situation with the environment is very serious and these weeds are very beneficial to birds, butterflies and bees. The UK has used pesticides for such a long time on limited space that it has decimated the insect population. I prefer the neglect as the next generation will pay the costs of the true neglect of our ecosystem.

I don’t prefer roundabouts and grass verges not being cut so that the visibility is so poor that roads become unsafe. I prefer people to be able to move around freely and safely far more than worrying about insects. My husband rang our local council to complain that not cutting grass back on a particular roundabout in our area so impaired visibility that it was extremely dangerous. The grass was cut back within days.

Ragwort is the main food of the Cinnabar Moth caterpillars. It is only harmful to horses so obviously needs to be removed from their fields, not anywhere else.

It’s using “environment” as an excuse for cutting cost. The roadside’s and junction's are really scruffy and roadsigns obscured.
Any impact on wildlife is negligible but greatly restricts visibility .

Desdemona

Ragwort is the main food of the Cinnabar Moth caterpillars. It is only harmful to horses so obviously needs to be removed from their fields, not anywhere else.

It’s ok in the fields as the horses won’t eat it. But when it’s everywhere it gets into the hay and that’s when they eat it and it can kill them.

Desdemona

Ragwort is the main food of the Cinnabar Moth caterpillars. It is only harmful to horses so obviously needs to be removed from their fields, not anywhere else.

The problem with Ragwort is it spreads millions of seeds on the wind. Councils are responsible for verges etc yet ours are full of ragwort. So all the stuff on verges ends up in other fields as I can testify. We control ragwort in our horse field by pulling it up by the roots as soon as we see it and burning it. All of that has blown from other areas.

Dreadful stuff and also very toxic to humans so you must wear gloves when handling it.

Councils are telling us not to cut hedges, not to cut grass to help the birds and the environment, it is all about saving money nothing else and an excuse for them not to cut the grass verges and overhanging trees.

It absolutely is about saving money. Nothing else. I don’t have a horse so I don’t know much about them, but many Gransnetters do have horses and they’re saying how lethal Ragwort is to them. Horses are far more important than Cinnabon Moth caterpillars.

I’ve been obsessed with protecting the environment for as long as I can remember. Was at a Labour Party meeting decades ago ranting on about how we must start recycling everything. Joined Greenpeace at the same time. Which is why I feel that I should be applauding this lack of mowing but I just think it’s gone too far. And, for all the lack of mowing I’m still not seeing any bees or butterflies.

Ragwort is having a bumper year, this year. I have never seen so much growing in our area in the 30 years ee have lived here. Despite pulling it every summer for that 30 years and getting it down to manageable quantities there has been a sudden resurgence of it. I suspect that the weather conditions of the past couple of years, being extremely wet, has somehow activated the years old seed bank which lurks in the soil.

I'm in the process of burning our ragwort 'crop', so far five dumpy bags full and another one waiting for the pyre. It's an unprecedented amount. (And don't worry, there's plenty left on verges and in other people's fields for the cinnabar moth caterpillars)

I am told by a conservationist that the rain has seriously depleted the cinnabar moth population, so this superabundance of ragwort will be doing very little to increase their numbers, there are no caterpillars...

Horses are far more important than Cinnabon Moth caterpillars.

I think that both are important.

I live on the outskirts of London and the same happened here. The entire area looked so unkempt and people were having a field day dumping rubbish. There were so many complaints the Council took it on board and we are now back to normal but it could not have saved money because it took twice as long to return it to normal.

MaizieD

^Horses are far more important than Cinnabon Moth caterpillars.^

I think that both are important.

But the most important of all is safety.
All these overgrown verges and roundabouts are unsafe.

I hear that central reservations and lawned parts of the pavement where we live are being wilded to encourage a bio diverse environment. That is a great idea but looks awful, people are more prone to drop litter in it and dog owners can’t pick up poo cos it disappears into the grass, also rodents are more likely to live in these deeply graded areas living on food dropped there.

Deeply grassed areas

We have a lot of butterflies in our garden each day, and some bees too, but not so many. My husband does the gardening and although we have shrubs, he likes flowers. Butterflies like flowers too, so I guess that’s why we see them.

MayBee70

I’ve been obsessed with protecting the environment for as long as I can remember. Was at a Labour Party meeting decades ago ranting on about how we must start recycling everything. Joined Greenpeace at the same time. Which is why I feel that I should be applauding this lack of mowing but I just think it’s gone too far. And, for all the lack of mowing I’m still not seeing any bees or butterflies.

Precisely what I said to my friend the other day when we went to visit my parents grave! We walked the whole way around the very large churchyard and never saw a butterfly, moth or bee.

It looks an absolute mess up there and my father would be turning in his grave. They have had what they call God’s Acre for a good 15 years to encourage wildlife. This was around the very oldest graves. In recent years myself and others have complained because the weeds and long grass has now spread over on to newer graves.