A NEW more bee-friendly look is coming to parts of Redditch’s Morton Stanley Park.

Redditch Borough Council is currently trialling a revised management plan for areas of the 95-acre park, as part of work to boost bees and other pollinators by encouraging more flowers and better insect habitats.

The borough council is expanding and improving the park’s familiar meadow areas, by mowing shorter and longer swathes through some of the grass in the way that will already be familiar to many park users.

In a bid to boost biodiversity further, putting the grass cuttings to use to build reptile habitats in nearby corners of the park will also be trialled.

Councillor Pat Witherspoon, whose portfolio includes parks and open spaces, said: “We’re pleased to keep on improving our beloved Morton Stanley Park, and in a way that helps the wildlife too. More meadow grass, obviously outside of the more formal areas of close-mown grass, will improve biodiversity in general and bee and other pollinator habitats specifically. And it looks beautiful.”

If the Morton Stanley Park trial is successful, similar improvements will be made elsewhere in the borough.

Morton Stanley Park is the second biggest park in Redditch Borough, after the huge 900-acre Arrow Valley Country Park.

It includes two car parks, woodlands, meadows, grassland, allotments, four football pitches with changing rooms, a variety of play areas including a skate park, and tarmac paths throughout.

These images from Arrow Valley Countryside Park and a meadow close to Morton Stanley Park managed in partnership with Natural England show the kind of biodiversity being aimed for under the revised management plan.