Disused land at Westbridge Park is being turned into a wild flower meadow.
Stafford Borough Council wants to encourage orchids and other wild flowers to blossom on the area and attract butterflies and bees as part of its biodiversity strategy. Work has already got under way to remove the existing grass so that new seeding can take place.
It would mean the town having a network of similar nature spots, as it is in between the Crown Meadow and Southern Meadow Local Nature Reserve. And the move is expected to go down well with ‘In Bloom’ judges, who look for sites dedicated to biodiversity as part of their judging criteria.
Councillor Mike Smith, cabinet member for leisure and culture, said: “This is a great idea. We are taking a couple of hectares of land that floods, and therefore pretty much unusable, and turning it into a haven for wildlife.”
We can expect to see the first signs of the meadow flourishing by next summer.
1 comment
Andy Osgathorpe
It’s certainly a much better then SBC’s original idea of spending thousands of pounds putting in football pitches onto an active flood plain. Football being a winter sport, who would have thought they would be unusable due to flooding. Let’s hope the development of Westbridge Park is a little better thought out. I also wonder if the Councillor Smith would care to say what consultation with Stone Town Council or indeed Stone residents has been undertaken and I assume that the appropriate bio diversity surveys were carried out before prior to this “wonderful decision”
Cllr Smith obviously didn’t heed the advice given in the Open Space, Sport and Recreation Assessment Update, June 2013 about development of the park with green features, cycle ways and footpath to promote it as tourist destination for leisure, recreation and festivals although I would be interest in his explanation of just how a M&S fits into a green corridor connecting Crown Meadow with this new meadow.
Let’s hope that with the future developments of the Localism Act 2011, that Stone is spared Councillor Mike Smith, SBC’s cabinet member for leisure and culture, “great idea” and we have a little more joined up thinking and investment in Stone.