I WRITE to express my disappointment with Wirral Council for the unnecessary mowing of some vital flower-rich verges now some work lockdown measures have been lifted.

Flower-rich grass margins with trees or plots provide important habitat and foraging sites for invertebrates (including wild pollinators) and birds.

These include places most people think of as untidy green spaces, roadside verges and hedgerows and unused fields.

While many verges and some fields are sterile to a mixed variety of flowers and grasses, there are many places in Wirral where wildflowers and have grown in abundance thanks to suspension of mowing during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Wirral Council has set about mowing these much-needed wild flowers for declining invertebrate species such as bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, flies, even some beetles which can carry pollen from one flower to another.

Our hedgerows provide vital resources for mammals, birds, and insect species. As well as being an important habitat, particularly to nesting birds between March and September, they act as wildlife corridors allowing dispersal between isolated habitats.

The council will no doubt cite Health and Safety measures as the main motivation for mowing verges and hedgerows and while this may be true in some places, the majority do not need to fall fowl of the mower.

We all need Nature for our continuous sense of well-being.

We need to stop eradicating it because does not fit in with our idea of perfection.

So please, if you see a council employee or a neighbour mowing the wildflowers, encourage them stop.

Let the grasses and flowers grow so we can marvel at the beauty and the variety Nature provides for all living things.

Susie Dodd, Wallasey