After all the good work in declaring a
climate emergency and in designating
bee-friendly roadsides comes this destruction, yesterday, of the wide verges all the way from Rhuthun/Ruthin to Dinbych, from hedge to hedge. Whatever happened to No Mow May to help protect pollinators? Not only that, there are places where they've cut the hedges right back, too. Is that even allowed during the bird rearing season?
Down to the ditch, left, and up to the hedge line, right, and the whole verge is swept aside
Where, then, is this new-found concern for the natural environment at Denbighshire County Council now? Its it in disrepute? But the fact that everyone's talking about this is a good sign. It means people are onside as regards keeping verges intact. That wouldn't've been the case five or more years ago.
Verges between Rhuthun and Dinbych are wide enough to leave more than a foot or two at the carriageway edge to look after itself
No doubt the devastation is to smarten up the place for Eisteddfod yr Urdd but instead it looks dried up and shrivelled up. It simply looks wrong and some say it is actually nothing short of an act of vandalism. Why are we encouraging fauna, especially inspects, in certain places on the one hand yet hack back so severely on the other when not at all necessary. Why not just a foot or two from the carriageway?
It's an honour for Dinbych to host the Eisteddfod but if this is the sort of exercise we might expect in the future it's perhaps as well neither of the Eisteddfodau come locally too often.
In contrast, here is the small strip of verge adjacent to the Taylor Wimpey portion of the Glasdir housing estate, including pink campion planted last year and flowering for the first time this. One wonders why we need to cut back verges more than a foot or two from the carriageway edge when we can have a display such as this... which benefits pollinators, too.
