ID250 WILDER Keele: a nature friendly approach to grounds maintenance

The Idea

I visited the Knepp Estate in West Sussex in the New Year and saw firsthand how the ecological practice of wilding is being used to restore natural habitats with minimal human intervention. The Knepp Estate use low-intensity grazing of free-ranging Exmoor ponies, Longhorn cattle and Tamworth pigs as proxies for extinct megafauna to drive habitat restoration of an intensive dairy farm. Knepp recently rewilded its 19th Century walled garden and in so doing reimagined traditional horticulture by encouraging natural ecological aesthetics and creating biodiverse habitats. Knepp shows what can be achieved if you think outside the box. Our campus abounds with highly managed lawns that are equivalent to ecological deserts – removal of clippings impoverishes the soil, herbicides negatively impact wildlife, and the reduced albedo of closely cropped lawns, which reflect only 15-25% of incoming sunlight, contribute to localised heating, plus they turn brown and crispy in the summer heatwaves, just as we welcome prospective students to our campus.  

Knepp shows us that there is a different way. There is an opportunity to bring the ethos of wilding to Keele to make our green spaces more resilient to summer droughts and to provide critical food resources to wildlife during the “hungry gap”. We are way behind the curve on this. The University of Sussex ‘Wild Campus Campaign’ has already led to changes in mowing practices, a commitment to set aside 42% of its campus land to nature and a vision to become the UK’s most biodiverse campus – note it has a quarter of the land area of Keele.  

To effect real change, we need to think broader than just Keele. No man is an island, and neither is Keele! We need to take a bigger, better and more joined up approach by working with adjacent landowners. One of our neighbours is the Summerfield Farm. This farm is part of a 5-year Environment Baselining Pilot with the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) that tests the ability of a new regenerative approach to increase soil carbon storage and biodiversity. Now is the perfect time for us to work together, for example by restoring the ecologically degraded sweet chestnut avenue that separates our lands so that wildlife has a corridor to move along.  

Keele’s landscape is one of its greatest assets, yet it remains without Green Flag recognition. Twenty-two UK universities, including Lancaster and Nottingham, have already achieved this internationally recognised award, as has nearby Silverdale Country Park. Accredited by Keep Britain Tidy, the Green Flag Award signals excellence in the management of public green spaces and can provide a valuable platform for external funding and partnership opportunities. Embracing Green Flag would provide a clear framework for delivering and demonstrating the vision of a wilder Keele. 

This strategic idea aims to rethink and reimagine how we manage our green spaces to embrace a more ecologically mindful approach that fosters a reputation for innovative green horticulture and nature restoration so that we uphold our Nature Positive Universities pledge.

Why This Idea Should Be Considered

Keele has one of the largest campuses in the UK that is set in a rural landscape surrounded by farmland giving us a unique opportunity to do things differently. The sports fields need to be maintained to a specified standard, but we do not have the same constraints on our other grasslands and could adopt more wildlife-friendly herbage control measures, such as No Mow May, wildflower meadow creation and conservation grazing using tree-friendly Shropshire sheep. This is how Collingwood Ingram maintained the grassy areas around his pioneering flowering cherries in the 1930s and it is a common practice in orchards. The sheep droppings would also enrich the soil, increasing carbon storage capacity. The lead author has been running student projects on meadow management at Silverdale Country Park for over a decade, has recently created her own wildflower meadow in her garden, and has championed wilder lawns on BBC Gardeners World and BBC Radio Stoke. 

How We Would Implement This Idea

Keele campus becomes a living laboratory in which we use an adaptive management approach to improve the wildlife potential of our habitats. I am focussing here on grasslands and hedgerows, but it will need to reach into every aspect of the estates management to effect real change. 

• Baseline data: Carry out an extended Phase 1 habitat survey using the UKHab classification system for the campus. Zone grasslands and hedgerows according to access requirements and biodiversity hot spots 
• Grasslands: Campus-wide stop using herbicides. Zoned management of grasslands. Change grass cutting regimes (higher cuts, fewer cuts), embrace No Mow May, sow wildflower meadows (free seed schemes and local donor sites), liaise with local scything groups to do traditional methods of grass cutting 
• Conservation grazing: requires infrastructure (electric fences), collaboration with farmers, collaboration with Keele Vet School, Keele shepherd, reintroduce the Swanmaster/mistress role but have it for sheep  
• Hedgerows: Only cut one side of the hedge at a time, adopt traditional hedge laying practices, plant up gaps, replace dying Sweet chestnut 
• Create a weekly Wilder Keele volunteer work party: Students, staff and the wider community invited to participate. Community involvement would make the group resilient to the ebbs and flow of students and create a core of knowledge, support and mentoring for our students. Student participation could be tied to the work placement module. 
• Apply for a Green Flag award for the campus: this could be tied into the student work placement module. There is also a Green Heritage Site accreditation award that we could pursue in future years.

What Success Would Look Like

• IMPROVED STUDENT ENTRY RATES: the grounds are filled with flowers, the sounds of bees and baaing sheep when prospective students are doing their summer Visit Day. The 2025 Student Voices survey, commissioned by the University Design Forum, revealed that 38% of students say promoting biodiversity influenced their choice of university.  
• IMPROVED NSS SCORES: alternative land management practices provide opportunities for a living lab, giving students authentic experiences of conservation in practice (e.g., monitoring of zoned grassland done by MSc Biodiversity & Conservation students, sheep care done by BSc Zoology and Veterinary Science students). 
• IMPROVED STAFF AND STUDENT WELLBEING: opportunities to participate in nature conservation activities, get providers to come and run workshops on how to scythe, etc. 
• LIVING LAB: opportunities for staff to publish research on evidence-based conservation and for this to kick-start other living lab activities 
• COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: an established core group of happy Wilder Keele volunteers that feel valued and listened to and wider collaboration with the Wilder Newcastle and Wilder Stoke networks and the SWT Wilder Neighbourhood Programmes 
• MEET NATURE POSITIVE UNIVERSITY PLEDGE: to assess a biodiversity baseline, set measurable targets, acting and influencing and reporting annually in regard to halting, reversing and recovering nature loss 
• IMPROVED UNIVERSITY RANKINGS (e.g., GREEN GOWN, SDG 15 SUSTAINABLE IMPACT RATINGS): The Times Higher Education Sustainability Impact Rating evaluates universities against the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 15. The outlined baseline data in this strategic idea, alongside demonstrable increased biodiversity and soil carbon content resulting from the proposed actions would directly contribute to the metrics required.  
• JOIN AN ELITE GROUP OF UNIVERSITIES FLYING A GREEN FLAG AND BUILD ON OUR REPUTATION AS A HE LEADER IN SUSTAINABILITY: this also feeds into university rankings.