Gliding out a meadow

A meadow restoration today with Stroud Valleys Project who had some seed to create a meadow for a gliding club. The site was 7.5 acres and next to a grass runway. The whole setting is a quite a diverse habitat for an airfield. Among the buildings and arable farms were patches of woodland habitat and herds of deer.

We only had 16kg of seed, which is a very thin spread for a field this size. It was however, pure wildflower with no grasses, so a different sizing from what I’m used to.

There were also several kg of pure yellow rattle, so that will really help keep the perennial ryegrass down.

We were pretty organised – there were 16 of us who lined up and spread the seed consistently in each segment of the area. By morning tea we had completed half and by lunch time, the task was complete.

We had the use of the gliding club house for breaks which made a change from perching in fields in the rain. I had an interesting conversation with a person there who has a 20 acre field nearby that she wants to restore to meadow. This may be suitable for the Glorious Grasslands project, so I passed it on as a lead.