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Dream Team Graffiti Clean

August 11, 2022

Members of our FX Plus Facilities team have been taking their cleaning skills off campus to help a local community initiative.

The children’s park in Mabe had been covered in graffiti so four of the facilities team stepped up to help other volunteers from Mabe in the clean-up operation.

Facilities Operations manager, Lynn Storey, explained: “I noticed a post on the Mabe Youth and Community Page on social media, which stated that the children’s park had been graffitied badly. I mentioned it to Rick Taylor to see if he had any ideas of how to remove it as we have all sorts of magic potions and equipment that can do wonderful things.

“Rick, Rob Eddy, Richard Barron and Paul Leyes all went across armed like the ghostbusters and completely blitzed it along with other members of the community. Due to the type of material the climbing equipment is made from, the team were a bit worried about how much they would be able to remove however it turns out they removed the lot! 

“It’s so important that we can help our local community as much as possible and the whole team believe in this sentiment too. Richard lives in Mabe (as do many others with the Facilities Team) so I know this would have meant a lot for him and his family too.”

The team has since received a message from the chair of Mabe Youth and Community Project: “Lynn….can I just say a massive thanks to Rick and his team – a real A team – who came over today and have managed to remove virtually all traces of the graffiti to the delight of not just me but several adults and their children who were using the park today. They had all the right gear and gave me a useful idea or two for the future. Once again, on behalf of the children of Mabe and MCYP…many thanks.”

Playground equipment covered in graffiti
The same playground equipment totally clean
Facilities Team member Rob Eddy looking through a playground tunnel

About FX Plus

Falmouth Exeter Plus (FX Plus) delivers shared services for Falmouth University and the University of Exeter in Cornwall to ensure a top quality experience for students, staff and all users of Falmouth and Penryn campuses.

Our vision is to provide ‘Exceptional environments that enable talented and creative minds to thrive’.

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Every Flower Counts

August 8, 2022

We are committed to supporting biodiversity and sustainability on our campuses. Part of this involves twice yearly flower counts which not only give us an estimate of how many bees we support but also to measure the benefits of changing the mowing regime on areas of land.

Since 2020, Every Flower Counts surveys are carried out by the Grounds Team twice a year, at the end of May and the end of July. They help to track changes and to compare different areas, including unmowed grass areas, wildflower turfed areas, seeded areas and more.

Most areas surveyed are the same each year but some vary, depending on which are being left wild/unmowed.

Alasdair Garnett, FX Plus Groundsperson, explained: “The surveys give us a rough idea of how areas are performing. From the latest (July 22) survey, we can see that our grassland is healthy and benefitting wildlife. And, as we’ve seen recently with goldfinches on the Ox Eye Daisy bank, once the bees have enjoyed the flowers the birds get the use of the seeds.

“We use volunteers to manage and improve the big wild areas, raking the cut grass and sowing wildflower seeds, and this year we also have many young plants grown from seed which will be planted from September onwards. We’ll be organising regular volunteering sessions from Freshers through the winter to help with this.”

Plantlife organises Every Flower Counts as a way of supporting plants and pollinators. The survey allows participants to calculate the difference they are making for nature with their Personal Nectar Score.

Counts include the number of individual, open flowers and flower richness – the number of different flowering species present.

The Plantlife results are displayed differently this year, preventing comparison with previous years but the Grounds Team is hoping to be able to compare future years from now on.

The July 2022 results headlines for Penryn Campus are:

  • Number of flowers on all areas surveyed: 2,884,918 (estimate) which gives –
  • Enough nectar sugar to support 112,521 honeybee workers per day.
  • Enough pollen produced to support 15,857 mining bee brood cells/larvae or around 1586 bumblebee larvae.

About FX Plus

Falmouth Exeter Plus (FX Plus) delivers shared services for Falmouth University and the University of Exeter in Cornwall to ensure a top quality experience for students, staff and all users of Falmouth and Penryn campuses.

Our vision is to provide ‘Exceptional environments that enable talented and creative minds to thrive’.