The County Council’s grounds maintenance teams cut the grass in green spaces, parks, sports pitches and grass verges in built up areas where the speed limit is 30 mph or lower.  Roadside verges in the wider countryside, where the speed limit is 40 mph or above, are generally cut by contractors once a year unless they need to be cut more frequently for road safety and visibility.

As part of our commercial operations, we also cut grass for other organisations such as town and community councils, the NHS and schools.  See our page on commercial operations for more information about this side of our work.

We operate a Nature Isnt Neat (NiN) policy to help support wildlife and increase our resilience to climate change.  Nature isn’t Neat is primarily focused on areas of grass that have little recreational use and around trees. The key principles of Nature isn’t Neat are:

• To allow the grass to grow throughout the year, allowing flowers and grasses to complete their full lifecycle in producing flowers and set seed
• To cut and take away the grass from most NiN areas at in the autumn
• To leave some areas of grass uncut until the following year to allow habitat for hibernating insects and other wildlife

More information on Nature Isnt Neat can be found here

Reduced cutting of green spaces has multiple benefits: it supports insects and other wildlife; it increases the resilience of plants and soils to drought or flooding; it protects tree roots and improves tree health; it stores more carbon than short cut grass; it improves the soil and root structure so that the soil can absorb rainfall more readily; it provides suitable areas for pollinating insects to complete their entire life cycle – egg, larva/caterpillar

Occasionally residents will see pictorial meadow mixes that have been sown in visible locations such as on roundabouts at town entrances.  Whilst these displays are attractive, they are not necessarily very good for wildlife or the environment and we are investigating how these can be improved to provide wider benefits.

Shrubs and hedges

Shrubs and hedges are generally maintained during the autumn and winter once the mowing season is over.  Hedges and shrub beds provide cover for a wide range of animals and birds.  Annual maintenance encourages dense growth that provides better cover.

In Monmouthshire there are over 100 playgrounds with various equipment, some including natural play landscaping and installations.  Depending on size, our play areas included play equipment suitable for a range of ages and abilities.

Our parks are used by many different groups of people. To help make our parks safe and enjoyable recreational spaces for all, please follow the Code of Conduct.  See Park users code of conduct – Outdoor Cardiff

All of our playgrounds are inspected by our accredited staff to ensure that the equipment is maintained and in a safe condition.  However, we cannot be present every day and if you see any broken or damaged equipment, please contact us as soon as possible, either by phone on 01633 633644 or by email to groundsandcleansing@monmouthshire.gov.uk

To find your nearest play park, please use the interactive map of our playgrounds:

Additionally, we provide a full range of commercial services for playgrounds including:

• Inspections undertaken by ROSPA accredited individuals
• Design consultation
• Full design along with scaled plans and drawings
• Fully detailed quotation of works
• Full Installation service by accredited installers
• Post installation inspection
• Programmed routine play area inspections
• Post completion after care
• Equipment and safety surfacing reports
• Tarmac resurfacing
• Help, advice and assistance on any part of the pre or post playground installation and inspection process included assistance with engagement of groups, clients and the general public

If you would like to discuss these services please click here scroll to commercial services

We have witnessed a devastating loss of wildlife from our rural and urban areas due to a decline in environmental quality.  This loss is accelerating due to climate change.  Climate change is also putting increasing pressure on our communities, particularly in respect to the impact of extreme weather such as flooding.

We have been challenged by our communities to work harder to protect our environment and reduce our impact on the climate.  We recognise how important this is to our residents and staff and we are committed to playing are part in managing publicly owned land sustainably.  At the heart of what we do, we aim to create a more resilient environment that is able to support a wide range wildlife, contribute to mental and physical wellbeing and provide safe and a viable future for generations to come.

Our response to the challenged set by our communities has been to develop new management approaches for our parks and open spaces.  These approaches aim to enhance wildlife by making more, bigger, better and connected spaces for nature that will make a healthier environment that is resilient to climate change and other risks.

Key Principles:

• Identify (Nature Isn’t Neat) areas to allow the grass to grow throughout the year, allowing flowers and grasses to complete their full lifecycle in producing flowers and set seed
• To cut and take away the grass from most of these areas at in the autumn
• To leave some areas of grass uncut until the following year to allow habitat for hibernating insects and other wildlife
• Reduce the use of chemicals in our work and adopt alternative approaches
• Investigate the use of alternative power for vehicles and machinery such as battery or hybrid vehicles, rechargeable chainsaws, mowers and other small machinery
• To increase the number of trees on council owned land
• To improve the management of trees so that they live longer and support more wildlife
• Improve our data collection to help us assess how well we are doing and identify areas we need to work harder.

Nature Isn’t Neat is an approach we have developed to managing our public open spaces.  We have produced leaflets, booklets and videos to help promote better understanding out what we are doing.  These resources can be found via the following link: Nature Isn’t Neat – Monlife

These principles are now being adopted beyond our own land and beyond Monmouthshire and the principles can be applied to almost any area of amenity grassland including private gardens.

The council runs two reuse shops that save items from being thrown away at our household waste recycling centres. These are located at Five Lanes household waste recycling centre (Wednesdays 10am-3pm) and Llanfoist household waste recycling centre (Tuesdays 10am-3pm).  Income from these shops is used to support tree planting in the county. Occasionally, we also sell tree saplings from the shops.

Volunteers are valued members of our community making an important contribution to keeping our parks and open spaces well maintained and attractive.  If you are interested in volunteering within your community to support the grounds and cleansing department there are plenty of ways to get involved.

 Helping in our parks and gardens

There are several “Friends of” groups across Monmouthshire, for example Friends of Linda Vista gardens and Friends of Bailey Park in Abergavenny who provide help with gardening, planting and weeding.   In Chepstow, there is a local community orchard group that looks after small orchards around the areas and supports others to get involved. 

Check around your local parks to see if there is a community garden or community group.

http://www.monmouthshiregreenweb.co.uk/friends-of-linda-vista-gardens

https://www.facebook.com/FriendsofBaileyPark

If your nearest park or garden does not have a Friends group, you cannot find reference to one, or you or your community are interested in starting a new group, please get in touch.

Helping to reduce litter

There are many hundreds of residents involved in litter picking in their communities.  Some are organised in groups and some help informally, either on their own, with family members or with neighbours and friends.

We work closely with Keep Wales Tidy to support our Litter Champions to ensure that they have the right equipment, can carry out litter picking safely and to arrange collection of litter that has been picked.  More information and how to obtain equipment can be found at one of the many litter picking hubs.  You can find your nearest hub here: Litter Picking Hubs – Keep Wales Tidy – Caru Cymru

For other volunteering opportunities with the county council, there is a volunteer portal for covering a broad range of volunteering opportunities: https://volunteer.monmouthshire.gov.uk/index-classic

At Monmouthshire County Council we pride ourselves in delivering a quality service for our customers. We have over 20 years experience in successfully delivering commercial projects for a number of organisations. Our professional approach and ability to deliver high quality work has led to excellent working relations and contract renewal year after year.  All our teams are fully trained, qualified and certified to the highest standards in both grounds maintenance and health and safety.

Currently we have many satisfied customers that range from large to small organisations in both public and private sectors which include: 

We offer a range of services and have depth of resource to deal with any scale of job, for example complete site clearances or reinstatement to one off tree planting. We have the capacity to carry out contracts that are short-term or long-term individual or multiple site. We are happy to provide a free no obligation survey and quotation where you will find our pricing is very competitive.  Below are just some of the services we can provide:

If you would like to enquire regarding these services please contact groundsandcleansing@monmouthshire.gov.uk