What’s New

Grass. It covers the majority of our urban green spaces, as well as covering the sides of the road verges in and out of our cities and towns.  Most of us probably haven't spent much time thinking about grass at all, apart from how often we need to cut our front lawns in the summer time!  However, when you do start to add it up, you quickly come to the realisation that close-mown grass covers a significant amount of our green areas, and that it requires a lot of management in terms of time, money and energy. (I'm sure anyone with a lawn at home will agree with this!) Gardens... business grounds... parks and community green spaces... the sides of roads all across the North East... What if we could turn some, if not most, of these close-mown grass areas into areas that support wildflowers and so in-turn support more biodiversity. Surely that would require a lot of work? Well, no. It just requires a different approach! The North East Scotland Biodiversity Partnership (NESBiP) hosted an exciting event this week (Tuesday 3rd December 2019) with attendees including staff from a variety of council areas across Scotland, SEPA, SNH, the SRUC, a wide range of community groups and councillors. The main theme of the talks was based around how we can reduce the management costs of our grass areas, while improving biodiversity at the same time - a win-win. Giles Laverack from Scotia Seeds provided insight on why it is important to use native wildflower seeds when we are sowing up new wildflower areas.  This is because when we use native seeds, and especially local provenance seeds, the wildflowers perform better and are of much greater benefit to our local wildlife - flowering at the right time of year and producing more pollen and nectar. NESBiP then welcomed Dr. Phil Sterling from Butterfly Conservation to share his experiences from changing the management of grass areas from his time at Dorset County Council, where he was in charge of the whole of the council’s Countryside Service including the Country Parks, nature reserves and road verges. He and his team pioneered changes in the way the council’s green spaces are managed, changing ordinary grass areas into wildflower meadows to bring back wildlife into the places where people live and work. So how did he do it? Well this goes back to a simple sounding subject - what makes grass grow.  Water, sunlight, temperature and the fertility of the soil.  Now we can't do anything about the amount of sunshine, heat and rain we get in Scotland, but we can change one thing - soil fertility. If we are able to lower the soil fertility in our areas with close mown grass, then we stop the grass growing so quickly, which means we need to cut it less. This also changes the types of grass that grow - instead of thick coarse grass types, we get much finer grasses and gaps in the soil which allow for wildflowers to come through.  These wildflowers provide homes and food for our dramatically declining pollinator species, such as bees, hoverflies, butterflies, flies and beetles. By letting the grass grow long, before cutting and removing the cuttings, you are able to reduce the nutrients going back into the soil. After doing this repeatedly in the growing seasons over a number of years, Phil's approach not only converted standard grass areas into havens for wildlife, but he also managed to reduce the amount of money, time and energy spent on managing these areas. NESBiP has been working this year to allow community groups across the North East to try out planting up and managing small wildflower areas - but we should be thinking bigger.  Let's try and change the way we think about all of our grass areas, and start to manage them for our wildlife and cutting our costs at the same time!

A new group encourages the community to enjoy the local woodlands and works to improve their biodiversity.

Everyone loves a wildflower meadow. They make a great backdrop for chocolate or washing powder adverts, but for bees and other pollinators they are critical habitat.

Why does SNH erect an electric fence around the Forvie tern colony? Why do RSPB use ponies to graze at Loch of Strathbeg? What about placement of bat boxes, or methods used to control invasive species?

Watch SCOTLAND: The Big Picture's stunning intro to biodiversity in North East Scotland