Volunteers get a guided tour
As an independent charity, Beautiful Perth volunteers work to improve the local environment.
To help them do this, they get lots of guidance and support from experts in organisations such as Scottish Natural Heritage, Butterfly Conservation and the Tayside Biodiversity Partnership.
This has highlighted the significant contribution that everyone in Perth can make to supporting biodiversity in our urban environment.
Perth and Kinross Council’s tree and biodiversity officer Joanna Dick has a key role to play in promoting biodiversity and the multiple benefits is brings.
This week, she treated Beautiful Perth to a fascinating guided tour of Greyfriars burial ground, just off Tay Street, which is managed as ‘Green Graveyard.’
This is a beautiful and historic place, a haven for wildlife and a peaceful space where people can visit, relax and connect with nature.
Greyfriars is one of an expanding network of green spaces in Perth.
It is part of a ‘wildlife corridor’ that connects habitats in the city.
There are similar sites on and around the North and South Inches, and in other parks and open spaces.
These provide multiple benefits, including improving air quality, controlling floods, helping improve health and wellbeing, and making Perth Joanna Dick gave the volunteers a guided tour
a beautiful place to live, work and visit.
Beautiful Perth itself plays its part by choosing more and more sustainable planting at the sites managed by its volunteers.
As well as the heather collection in Riverside Park, which is always buzzing with bees and other insects, volunteers have planted perennials, wildflowers, native species and pollinator friendly plants in displays across Perth.
And PA readers can also help by choosing similar plants for their
gardens, or at their business premises, or in window boxes, containers, hanging baskets and tubs - even the smallest display can make a difference!
If anyone wants to know which plants to choose, they can visit the Royal Horticultural Society’s website where they will find ‘RHS plants for pollinators’ lists of recommended garden plants, wildflowers and plants of the world via https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/ conservation-biodiversity/wildlife/ plants-for-pollinators