97% of species-rich meadows have disappeared since the 1930s, and now only 2-3% of lowland grassland is species rich. Because so many of our ancient meadows have been lost, landowners, councils and organisations such as the Wildlife Trusts, The National Trust, the RSPB, Plantlife, The Woodland Trust and others are now actively engaged in creating new meadows and improving those that exist.
However, research has identified an evidence gap in the broad methods to use to create a new meadow from scratch, or to improve a poor one. We know how to achieve a meadow that has perhaps between fifteen and twenty or so species in a quadrat, but less is known as to how to achieve the forty or more that can be found in ancient meadows. The issue is that certain flowers typical of ancient meadows don’t seem to respond to the techniques that are currently available. They fail to establish, and with this comes the risk that meadow creation and improvement gets ‘stuck’ part way and does not reflect the full potential spectrum of species diversity. As a result, the full range of benefits that species rich meadows should provide fail to materialise. This means that, not only are such grassland areas less aesthetically rewarding for people to look at, but arguably more importantly they are less effective at supporting a rich and varied community of insects, birds and mammals.
It is known that this problem is probably related to ‘competition’ from other meadow plants. But the precise ways that this competition can be overcome, and these species allowed to prosper, have not yet been identified. The Naturetale Restoration Foundation (NRF) was set up to run a long term trial to make a contribution to filling this knowledge gap.
Starting in 2016 the Naturetale Restoration Foundation (NRF) has been running a long term experiment to identify and measure the effect of differing levels and types of competition on the ability of five selected ‘difficult’ meadow flower species (Meadow saxifrage, Pignut, Saw-wort, Burnet saxifrage and Dropwort) to establish themselves as part of new wildflower meadows. This uses two different establishment treatments (rotovation and no rotovation of the soil) and two different mowing treatments to create four regimes to replicate varying levels of competitive intensity. After 7 years these initial plots are now starting to generate statistically analysable data, which has provided both indicators of appropriate management practice, as well as posing some questions. Hence we now wish to establish 12 further plots, aiming to answer these questions and thus improve the guidance that can be provided to the organisations referred to above. Our experience so far indicates that it may take up to five more years for these new plots to generate analysable data.
The results from our trial will be distributed to organisations involved in the management and creation of grassland habitats. Papers on the trial and its conclusions may also be presented at appropriate ecological conferences.