Hedgehog Awareness Week

Hedgehog Awareness Week takes place Sunday 5 - Saturday 11 May. Get involved to find out more about the problems hedgehogs face and ways in which you can help them.  

Over the last 20 years, hedgehog numbers in rural areas have plummeted. In response, passionate members of the university formed the UoN Hedgehog Friendly Campus Group to raise awareness of the plight of the hedgehog and take action across our campuses.

Come along to our event and learn how to track hedgehog activity on campus, at home or in your local community with a footprint tunnel workshop from the Hedgehog Friendly Campus Group.

• 6pm
• Thursday 9 May
• Meet at the Djanogly Terrace (top of the steps outside Portland Building, UP)

No booking is required, just turn up.

Find out more about Hedgehog Awareness Week

No Mow May

This year the university is once again leaving some of our green spaces to grow wild as part of No Mow May.

Nature charity Plantlife run the annual No Mow May movement, asking everyone to lock away lawn mowers and leave gardens and parks to bloom and go wild for a month. The grounds team are supporting this biodiversity initiative across all our UK campuses.

The loss of flower meadows in the UK over the past 90 years has led to a steep decline in bees and other pollinating insects. Gardens and green spaces have hence become an increasingly important habitat, especially when areas are left undisturbed.

As well as providing a feast for pollinators, this also helps tackle pollution, reduces urban heat extremes, and locks away atmospheric carbon below ground. Our campuses offer a rich mosaic of habitats to local wildlife. And when grass is mown less, the more pollinators will make a home and support the broader ecosystems.

New wild spaces have also been created for No Mow May in the following locations:

University Park

• adjacent to the Downs
• along the northern boundary of campus between the A52 and Derby Hall

Jubilee Campus

• outside Melton Hall
• by the tennis courts
• additional spaces have also been sown with wildflower seed, including grassed spaces within Newark Hall which is part of a wildflower experiment

Sutton Bonington 

• various pockets of wild areas
• Highfields Sports Ground

Riverside Sports Complex

• as part of an ongoing biodiversity project with funding from Severn Trent Water, spaces alongside the sports pitches, where new native hedgerow are being planted, are also being left for the benefit of wildlife

More widely, the university is committed to reducing the frequency of mowing, and in some areas this has been stopped completely. Edges and margins are increasingly being widened and left to grow wilder.

Find out more about No Mow May