How does that video make you feel? What's that worth to you?
Did you know that wildflowers have huge benefits to the environment, helping us to combat climate change and reaching our zero carbon target by 2030.
- They provide colour and vibrancy to an urban city - do you notice the roundabouts more during spring and summer as they are covered in pretty, colourful wildflowers. Wildflower areas can be put almost anywhere - allowing more areas to
provide a diverse range of greenspaces, and making a neighbourhood vibrant. - Wildflowers offer homes and food to a hundreds of thousands of insects and wildlife and create green corridors for them to travel across the city safely.
- The bees and butterflies are an essential part of the environment and wildflowers offer them food and the ability to pollinate flowers and crops.
- Did you know that 1/3 of food crops are pollinated, so without these insects we wouldn't have a lot of the food we eat?
- Not only do they offer homes they also store carbon which takes it from the air we breathe, making air quality better and helping to combat climate change.
Wildflowers are truly wonderful things and something which we know you want to see more of. But we cannot do this without your help.
What will your money go towards?
Plymouth City Council are asking the people to Plymouth to pledge their support to help us create more wildflower areas across the city to help us keep delivering huge benefits to us and to nature /wildlife.
The money raised will go directly in to creating new wildflower areas across the city, giving more people access to nature, creating a vibrant city.
We are currently mapping the city of Plymouth, where the current wildflower areas are and where we could place new ones. This mapping will help us to plan where we could over the next few years add valuable wildflower areas to support the city of Plymouth in social, environmental and economic ways.
So, how can you help?
You can donate as much or as little as you can, just follow the link below to the payment page.
Pledge your support today.
If you cannot donate, you can still support the campaign in other ways by pledging your support to parks and greenspaces across the city, Visit our Donate to Parks and Greenspaces page to find out how you can get involved.
If you have any questions try the FAQs below.
Your Council tax pays for a whole host of services across the city including health care, education, waste collections. Parks are not a statutory service, which means the Government doesn’t have to support them but in Plymouth we choose to as we know how important they are. In the city we have 711 hectares of green space which includes a whole range of different spaces which also mean a lot of different ways to manage and maintain them.
This has become a very uncertain time in many ways for all of us. Parks have been a life line for everyone over the last few months and we need your help to keep them special for everyone, forever.
Parks and greenspaces offer so much for everyone. A place to play, socialise, relax, exercise. It also offers spaces for businesses and volunteers.
Do you care about climate change? Do you care about nature and wildlife? Do you care about having access to greenspaces? Do you care about the future of parks?
Parks provide essential services to us but also to nature and wildlife, and we need your help to future proof our parks for generations to come.
This is an incredibly uncertain time for many of us. Some people are still furloughed, whilst others have lost their jobs or their businesses, or are facing the prospect of redundancy.
Right now, this is about making sure that you look after yourself and family first. However, once you have done so, if there is a little left, please donate it to our parks. Every gift has the power to help transform our parks into spaces that continue to aid our health and our mental wellbeing like they have done over the last few months.
No, not at all. We are not going to sell off parks and greenspaces, but this campaign will help us to make them better for the future. Creating more diverse spaces for us and nature to thrive will save the city money, help us fight climate change and improve areas of the city,
Good point. There is a call for Government to support parks and greenspaces across the UK, however it is not known if Plymouth will get any of this money or if there are specific things this money will need to be spent on. Your support will help us to improve areas of the city, providing essential services to both us and wildlife.
Your donation will be ring fenced to ensure it is spent on the creation and maintenance of more wildflower areas across the city.
Money from this campaign will be spent directly on the creation and maintenance of wildflowers areas across the city.
These areas will support the city in many ways, giving your more diverse parks and greenspaces across the city for you enjoy, play in, relax in or stroll through. Being out in nature and parks has been proven to support good mental health and could support saving the NHS £111m a year.
Creating more of these spaces across the city can enable more people to have access to nature, improving the look and feel of an area but also bringing people closer to nature.
These areas will support our climate emergency action plan, helping us to reach our carbon zero target. Wildflowers support pollinators who pollinate food crops in our local area, which without them we wouldn’t have the food we eat.
In the areas that are not dedicated to wildflowers will still be cut as usual on the schedule that we release. If you want more information on the current grass cutting regime, visit our grass cutting page.
The Green Estate team have already begun mapping areas of the city that could be turned in to wildflower areas. This includes parks and open greenspaces across the whole city. We will continue this mapping exercise and then look to see what we can accomplish with the money raised. No locations have been decided as of yet.
To prepare, plant and have 1 year of maintenance:
(these costs are approx. depending on soil, seed choice, area chosen)
1000 Sqm = £305
0.5 acre (approx. 2000Sqm) = £610
1.2 Acre = (just under 1 adult sized football pitch) = £1,467
1 Hectare (2.4 acres - roughly 2 ½ adult sized Football Pitches) = £2,935
For every £1 donated we can plant – 3 square meters of wildflower areas.
If these FAQs havent answered your questions email wildlife@plymouth.gov.uk.