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More on KentOnline
A council says it will not be taking part in a scheme to abandon lawnmowers next year after people complained about the unsightly state of grass verges.
Medway took part in the national No Mow May initiative and encouraged residents to stop cutting their lawns for the month.
Wild plant conservation charity Plantlife promoted the campaign, saying the purpose was to let wild flowers grow thus encouraging bees to pollinate.
It encouraged councils to allow their parks and road verges to go unmowed for a month.
Despite the good intentions, the council's Twitter account attracted complaints from residents in June about the state of verges, with some saying how it was causing issues with drivers' line of sight at some junctions.
Council leader Cllr Alan Jarrett (Con) said the scheme will not be taking place in the same form next year, calling the concept "deeply flawed" and "poorly thought through".
Having questioned whether it amounts to gains in biodiversity, Cllr Jarrett said he had experienced the issues with sight lines on road junctions for himself.
During a meeting of the business support overview and scrutiny committee, he said: "We will come up with a scheme that taps into the best part of our city benefits available without taking a blanket approach that basically makes everyone fed up and causes massive problems when the grass is cut.
"A lot of our green spaces look like hay meadows quite frankly, because we can't cut and collect everything.
"So the whole thing was a national scheme that was well meant but poorly thought through and we won't be repeating it.
"To have a species-rich meadow in an urban environment like ours, requires intervention, not just letting the grass grow."
Cllr Simon Curry (Lab) said he thought the scheme had been successful.
He described how feedback on social media had largely been positive, although he acknowledged there had been issues with road junctions and some graveyards not being cut.
He said: "Part of the principle behind No Mow May and stopping mowing generally is allowing biodiversity and meadows to come back is to is to replace those lost meadows and those lost species."
