A taste of honey
Another summer walk and picnic with Glorious Grasslands to go and look at a site we’ve been working on to see how it’s faring. Today we returned to another favourite site that we have been restoring slowly over the last two or three years.
It’s an oasis of unimproved grassland in the middle of arable farmland. Most of the restoration tasks have been cutting back scrub to expose more grassland. We decided to do a full site survey as we walked around. In the end, we counted 83 species which was pretty good.
The two particular standouts were the grass vetchling and the bee orchids, both of which are quite rare.
There was loads of grass vetchling in one part of the site, so that has spread very well (sadly not a part that we have restored). But hopefully that bank will spread to the new parts over the next few years.
Where we had done work, there is now a lot of grassland instead of scrub edge. This was the main purpose that that restoration activity. When we return in the winter, we can cut that grass low which should encourage other wild flowers to seed.
It was a hot day again, so we sheltered in the barn for our picnic and departed after lunch.
