Working on the millennium bank
Following an initial survey and report, Glorious Grasslands returned with a volunteer team to start the restoration of the bank by the side of Millennium Green. This is home territory for me, and I was able to walk to a grasslands task for the first time.
The objective today was to cut the long grass that is difficult to access with machinery or cattle (a common theme across GG sites). There was also some light scrub to remove, and everything is raked off to remove nutrient from the bank. It’s an important calcareous site, with many indicator species such as bird’s foot trefoil and lady’s bedstraw being present, but unable to thrive in the dominant grass.
I spent most of the day brush cutting which was a lot harder than I thought on first inspection.
The grass was quite swarded and needed more than one sweep in most places to cut it low. Luckily we had two brush cutters and a lot of rakers.
There were also a large number of anthills which we tried to avoid disturbing, save for a light hair cut on top. Yellow meadow ants are an important part of the biodiversity and the hills are particularly good micro habitat for bird’s foot trefoil, rock rose and lady’s bedstraw.
The team had dwindled to four by 2pm, but we were able to rake everything that had been cut and left a large cut site which has maximum chance of blooming the latent seed bank underneath. We shall be keeping an eye on it over the summer to check on results.
