Creating flower-rich dry grassland

From 2002 to 2008 we converted 15ha of arable land into flower-rich, dry grassland. This new grassland:

• is species- and flower-rich (read more…)
• gives previously uncommon plants a strong foothold on the farm (read more…)
• already supports rare insects (read more…)
• can be funded by Countryside Stewardship (read more…)
• is accumulating soil organic matter and reducing erosion (read more…)

We think the creation of this has been helped by:

• Low-fertility soils, some of which are shallow over chalk (read more…)
• Using a very diverse (c.90 species), local-origin seed mix (read more…)
• Establishment methods (read more…)
• Ongoing management (read more…)
• Small-scale habitat diversity (read more…)

As our dry grassland creation has been relatively successful, a lot more information is provided in the ‘read more’ sections.