THROWING out the weedkiller and mowing your grass less often could help boost bees, bats and moths.
A Swindon-wide project wants you to manage your garden in a more wildlife-friendly way. The scheme, called Bee Roadz, aims to increase the number of pollinators - insects like bees and butterflies.
And this weekend, youngsters from Penhill got their paints out to daub the project’s bright logo across dull garage walls at the Haven, a nature gardening initiative behind John Moulton Hall off Penhill Drive.
Glynis Hales, who runs the Swindon Bee Roadz group, said species needed so-called wildlife corridors - areas rich in different plants and flowers.
“Species like the six-spot Burnet moth will eat themselves out of house and home. That’s one of the reasons why they become extinct, because there’s nowhere else for them to go,” she said. “That’s why we need wildlife corridors.
“If we build it they will come. But we haven’t got a lot of time.”
Bee Roadz began in Marlborough, the brainchild of Wiltshire environmentalist Milly Carmichael of group Transition Marlborough.
Milly hopes to connect Marlborough with towns like Pewsey through flower-rich wildlife corridors. And she knows it can work. Walking through one field on the Marlborough Downs set aside for wildlife, she described it as alive with the buzzing of insects: “You just stopped still and the whole place was alive in a way that much of our landscape is not.”
She urged people to stop using pesticides and weed-killers in their garden and mow the lawn less frequently to encourage wildlife.
For more, visit: www.facebook.com/Beeroadzzswindon.
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