News – Page 2 – ToBeLawn

Taking advantage of the mild weather in the last weeks of winter, we set off to establish research sites in locations previously selected (in autumn 2022) with employees of the Department of Urban Greenery in Katowice and Kraków Municipal Greenspace Authority. In total, 15 research sites were established, some in Katowice and some in Kraków. Within each one of them, plots of equal size will be delineated, where three different mowing frequencies will be applied – intensive, extensive, and biocenotic mowing.

Over the next two years, the plots will be monitored and examined for, among others, the condition of the soil system. We hope that the collected data will allow us to assess the impact of mowing frequency on the condition of the roadside lawn ecosystem and the quality of its services.

Gallery:

Site visit with the employees of the Department of Urban Greenery in Katowice / photo by Małgorzata Stanek

ToBeLawn researchers during fieldwork — Site visit with the employees of the Department of Urban Greenery in Katowice / photo by Małgorzata Stanek

In September 2022, we took part in a conference co-organized by ToBeLawn’s partners – the Sendzimir Foundation and the Kraków Metropolis Association, as part of the INTERLACE project: international cooperation to restore and rehabilitate urban ecosystems. The aim of the conference was to expand the knowledge and exchange experiences on the implementation of Nature Based Solutions (NBS).

The conference largely took the form of intensive workshops, during which the problems that City Managers have been facing were presented, especially in the context of climate change, air pollution, as well as social conditions. During group work, Workshop 1 discussed the principles of applying universal standards for urban greenery maintenance in Polish and European cities, including mowing standards. Attention was paid to the necessity of cooperation between different groups of stakeholders, including scientists (e.g. botanists, ecologists, entomologists, soil microbiologists), practitioners, i.e. people who deal with greenery in cities on a daily basis, NGOs, and city residents. In the case of our project, such cooperation has already brought results – it has allowed us to properly design the zones in which different mowing regimes will be implemented, and to determine the optimal timing of treatments.

For more information on the conference, follow the links:

Gallery:

ToBeLawn on the first day of the Cities Talk Nature Europe Conference / photo by Małgorzata Stanek

A visit to the Polish Aviators Park in Kraków — ToBeLawn on the first day of the Cities Talk Nature Europe Conference / photo by Małgorzata Stanek