How unpredictable climate is changing parks

Increasingly unpredictable seasons caused by climate change are reshaping how parks and green spaces should be cared for, a council has said.

Shrewsbury Town Council said it had seen recent rapid grass growth due to an "unusually dry summer followed by warm, wet conditions".

The announcement comes following a summer of extreme heat, with July 2026 the driest on record for England and Wales and the Met Office warning it is "very likely" that 2027 will be the hottest year on record globally.

"The weather has given us very different conditions to manage this year," said Danny Powell, operations manager of the council's recreation and green space team.

A spokesperson for the town council said contrasting conditions throughout the year meant the local authority was having to reconsider how to manage green spaces.

During the prolonged dry spell in the summer grass cutting was scaled back, while some work which usually takes place later in the year - like path tidying and hedge cutting - was brought forward.

"Our teams have been able to make good use of the quieter period for mowing, getting ahead with other maintenance work," Powell added.

"It's important that we remain flexible as our weather and seasons become less predictable."

The council added that it would look at how its planting schemes, grass management and wider maintenance programmes could be adapted to "remain resilient to increasingly variable weather conditions."

The council is not the only organisation looking at how to address a changing climate.

Researchers at Harper Adams University in Shropshire have started working with the University of Warwick Crop Centre to try and come up with crops that can withstand stressful weather conditions.

Dr Andrew Beacham, a lecturer at Harper Adams said they were taking "beneficial features" from certain plant varieties that cope better in extreme weather conditions.

Meanwhile the owner of a cafe in Wellington, Shropshire, said he was considering changing his opening hours after closing for two days in June due to the extreme heat.

David Cheshire told the BBC that he was trying to "introduce new practices to become more accustomed to the heat" with an option being to open the cafe earlier and only serve hot food at the start of the day "to try and get the temperature down".

Scientists have warned that hotter temperatures are likely in the years ahead and say the UK should make preparing for extreme heat a much greater priority - as well as rapidly cutting emissions of planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide.

"We expect increasing temperatures and the breaking of temperature records due to climate change," said Lizzie Kendon, professor of climate science at the University of Bristol and head of climate projections at the Met Office.

The UK's hottest recorded temperature now stands at 40.3C, set in July 2022. Before 1990, the UK had not seen 37C.

If global warming continues at its current pace, temperatures in the mid-forties could be a serious possibility for the UK by 2050, according to Met Office projections.

"Climate change [is] loading the atmosphere with extra heat and making extreme temperatures far more intense than they would have been in the past," said Dr Akshay Deoras, senior research scientist at the University of Reading.

Follow BBC Shropshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.