This week Natural Resources Wales have granted Pontypridd
the status of official Bee Friendly town. This is part of a scheme devised by
Welsh Government and Friends of the Earth Cymru to incentivise towns, counties
and businesses to take action to help reverse the decline of pollinators, bees
in particular, which are an important
keystone species who’s numbers are declining rapidly.
In order to gain this accreditation the Friends of the Earth Pontypridd group had to help bees in 4 ways: By providing habitat, providing food (in the form
of flowers), getting the community involved and taking action to reduce
pesticide and herbicide use.
The group would like to thank Pontypridd Town Council who have been very supportive of their efforts from the start, creating an environment and
land use committee. They are currently working with local allotment associations to
create a Bee Friendly strategy for allotments and are bringing the land they
manage open to use by community groups and opening up their land management
policy for public input. They stagger mowing on a large field they manage
called ‘Tommy’s Field’ to allow the native wildflowers to bloom.
Ynysanghard War
Memorial Park has also made changes to make itself more Bee Friendly, allowing patches of the park to flower instead of mowing, building bug
‘hotels’ and prioritising hand weeding over herbicide use. The ‘Friends of Ynysangharad Park’ volunteer group has been established which is a voluntary
community group that has brought the abandoned greenhouses back in to use and
has established a community garden, using permaculture techniques to grow food
and flowers.
Schools have gotten involved in planting
bee friendly flowers and establishing wildflower areas. This includes St
Michael’ Primary School (which won an RCT
‘Love where you live award for their efforts), Coed-y-Lan and Coedpenmaen. A group of local residents
called ‘Friends of Graigwen Woods’ got together to buy and conserve a large
piece of woodland above Graigwen in
order to bring it into community ownership and prevent it being developed. This has preserved an important piece of
natural habitat.
With help from the Your Pontypridd BID and the Town Council, a
number of planters have been put around town and planted with bee friendly
flowers. In addition to this there has been
numerous events and workshops where people have been making bee hotels,
planting flowers and learning about bees and other pollinators, and a lot of
little community gardens and guerrilla gardens have popped up around Pontypridd
where locals have taken it into their own hands to make their community look
nicer and help wildlife.
Pontypridd has managed to achieve the
status of Bee Friendly Town by building on it’s strong community and by
different groups working together towards a common goal. Congratulations to everyone involved, find out more about your local community groups on the links below.
Friends of the Earth Pontypridd - https://www.facebook.com/FOEPontypridd/
Friends of Ynysangharad War Memorial Park - https://www.facebook.com/FriendsOfYWMP/
Pontypridd Town Council - https://www.facebook.com/PontypriddTownCouncil/
Friends of Graigwen Woods - https://www.facebook.com/friendsofgraigwenwoods/