Plymouth preparing to Buzz

Thursday 28th April 2016

This summer the centre of Plymouth will be blooming, and buzzing with bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects as part of the Urban Buzz project. Work is already underway to create this vibrant new addition to Plymouth.

Millbay Park, St Andrew’s Cross and Derry’s Cross roundabouts and along Western Approach will be full of beautiful flowers and buzzing with life come the summer. Buglife and Plymouth City Council, along with the help of some local volunteers will shortly be sowing colourful mixes of flowers throughout these areas, following careful land preparation.

Laura Curry, Plymouth’s Urban Buzz Officer said “Over a third of Plymouth is identified as green space; there are many exciting opportunities within the city for creating wonderful new homes for these essential insects as well as helping local communities – providing them with beautiful, bright, and inspiring flower-filled places that local people can use and enjoy, and catch the Urban Buzz in Plymouth!”

Plymouth Urban Buzz, supported by Biffa Award, Garfield Weston Foundation and in partnership with Plymouth City Council is working very closely with the local community to find and create over 100 new places for our precious pollinators throughout the city. We are working to turn publicly accessible spaces including unused corners of parks, community gardens and patches of unused urban space into new nesting sites and beautiful flower-rich areas.

Natural Infrastructure Officer at Plymouth City Council, Jeremy Sabel said: “We are really excited to be working so closely with Buglife on this project. By creating a haven for wildlife in the city centre we are helping to stop the rapid decline of some of our natural pollinators like bees, hoverflies and butterflies.”