Neglected Green Spaces

I am lucky to be able to walk from my front door to at least half a dozen newish green-spaces.  They have all been delivered by developers to compensate for the impact of new houses.  All of these green-spaces give the public access to land that was previously private.  For a conservationist, they also offer a range of different habitat types and related wildlife.  However, I am increasingly worried about the poor state of some of them. 

Two of these green-spaces are being neglected while the local council and the developers argue about planning obligations.  These disagreements, which have been going on for several years, are exacerbating the two sets of problems with all of these green-spaces and the developments that they are associated with: developers failing to deliver all of the environmental features that they promise; and inadequate plans for looking after those features that they do deliver.

Features that developers have promised but failed to deliver in our area include useable allotments, bird and bat boxes, and protection for existing trees and key species such as badgers.  Part of the problem here is that development plans evolve and subcontract arrangements change as the planning application progresses.  As a result, developers often have a legitimate excuse that it is unclear what obligations they are actually supposed to be delivering.  As I am currently finding, developers are unlikely to add a swift box or a hedgehog hole after a house has been sold, and the relevant planning authority is unlikely to do anything about these omissions when they believe that there are bigger problems to be resolved. 

Features that have subsequently been neglected include paths, trees, wildflower meadows, water courses and ponds.  All of these require some form of intervention after their initial creation.  The next few paragraphs will look at the consequences of neglect in more detail. 

Paths are not being maintained.  In at least one case the surface of the path is becoming increasingly uneven and hence is a trip hazard.  In another, overgrowing bushes are forcing users close to a bank and pond.  The lack of path maintenance also results in people creating new paths (“desire lines”) by taking the route they want because of the lack of a clear path.

In one development near me thousands of pounds worth of trees have died because of a lack of water.  In one line of trees, planted to screen houses from a nearby path, all but one have died.  The developers recoup the cost of these trees through the prices they charge homebuyers, so it is the homeowners that are losing out.  New trees need to be watered during dry spells until they are established.  Developers like to plant “standards”, trees that are already several years old and more than a metre tall, as they have an instant visual impact.  However, standards need even more watering than younger trees to get them established.  All new trees can also be helped by reducing competition from other plants by clearing and mulching around the tree.

Many new trees and shrubs are planted with plastic guards to protect them from rabbits and deer while they get established. These guards should be removed after a couple of years and before they restrict the growth of the trees.  Unfortunately, in areas where a significant number of trees have died, the plastic guards become litter and even get carried around and dumped elsewhere by dogs and children.

In both of the areas that I am most worried about, the developers created wildflower meadows.  In the first summer the flowers were fantastic, subsequently they have not been so spectacular.  Our native wildflowers have evolved to prefer less fertile soil and the management regime practiced for centuries in the UK’s hay-meadows.  The best practice for managing them is to cut the meadow once after the flowers have gone and seeds have set.  The hay should then be left for a couple of weeks before being removed.  This step allows seeds to drop onto the soil whilst removing the other parts of the plants which would enrich the soil.  If hay meadows are not managed in this way, they eventually become less diverse in terms of flora and hence fauna. 

Water-courses and ponds need to be cleared regularly, especially where dry conditions have allowed trees and shrubs to encroach.  Failure to do this can result in ponds drying out or even flooding as water is unable to get past the shrubs and the litter that collects around those plants.

In England, we are waiting for the introduction of a new form of environmental mitigation called biodiversity net gain.  Under this legislation, developers and local authorities will work together to ensure that new developments have environmental improvements that deliver sustainable biodiversity gains.  These plans must demonstrate how new green features will be managed for at least the next 30 years.  Although this sounds like progress and is underpinned by a really impressive set of tools built on sound science, I predict that it will become another area of dispute between developers and planners.        

I do believe that there are a number of things that we can we all do to help minimise the problems that I set out above and hence to ensure that our green-spaces are better for nature and better for those who want to enjoy that nature.   Potential actions include:  sponsoring a space, adopting a tree, lobbying your elected representatives, and demanding better from developers.

The green-spaces that I am worried about have lots of regular users and are adjacent to new houses with management associations.  A group of people could sponsor each green-space, perhaps in the form of a “friends of” group, and work with the people who manage that space to make sure that it is managed well.  The group could even undertake tasks of their own to improve that space.

If you live in a new housing development or near an area where new trees have been planted then please consider adopting one of these trees and making sure that it is watered during dry spells until it is established.  There is advice and a great set of resources here – https://www.trees.org.uk/Help-Advice/Watering-Young-Trees

Our local councillors are accountable for the state of any green-spaces managed by their council.  They should also be aware of the state of any green-spaces that are likely to become the responsibility of their council.  Managing green-spaces is surprisingly complex and we can’t expect our councillors, who are volunteers, to understand all of this complexity.  Please take any opportunity that you have to help your local councillors understand these issues.

If you are the owner of a new home or are thinking about buying one, then there are a number of questions that you should be asking the developers, such as:

• Does my new house have a hedgehog hole and a swift box (or similar)? 
• How are the trees and green-spaces going to be managed?  
• Have native plants been used in hedges, copses, etc and how are they going to be managed?

If we all take one or more of the actions mentioned above then our green-spaces will be nicer places for us to enjoy and they will be better for nature.  We can also help make sure that promises made during development are kept and less time and money is wasted by planting things and then neglecting them.