North Devon Grasslands project

October 2023

Sowing of locally harvested seeds

33ha of wildflower poor grassland on the North Devon Coast have been sown with seed harvested locally by Rangers. Without the North Devon Grassland project this would have cost between £118,000 and £170,000. There is significant financial and ecological risk with regularly purchasing and sowing this quantity of seed. The project aims to make introducing wildflowers to existing degraded and newly created habitats business as usual for the Rangers. Making the practice ecologically and financially sustainable.

July 2023

Wildflower monitoring and seed collection

This month is when the first year's wildflower monitoring can take place. Percentage of wildflower coverage, presence and frequency of species, sward height and negative indicators are all observed and recorded by Rangers. This builds a picture of how potentially successful the seed sowing work, and winter grazing has been. Some species can take up to 7 years to become well established, whilst others can become dominant within 2 years. Therefore, the natural balance of species in the meadow can take many years to settle down. At this stage we can monitor how well the new wildflower rich grassland is being cared for which provides a likely trajectory for success. In year one, on average across the 86ha of species poor grasslands sown in North Devon, the coverage of wildflowers went from 2% to 30%.

Through July and August, the Rangers have been taking advantage of dry sunny days to collect seed from existing wildflower rich grasslands. This is done with either a brush harvester, seed vacuum or with our hands depending on, what species is being collected, the sensitivity of the wildlife at the site and the accessibility. Rangers harvested 200kg of seed during July and August. The seed is dried in barns for 3-6 days and the chaff (grass stalks, seed husks and other material) is separated from the seed through sieves. The seed is then stored and labelled ready for use in the Autumn.

Thank you to Bumble Conservation Trust for networking the National Trust with local landowners. Thank you to our neighbours who allowed us to harvest seed from their meadows. Thank you to Natural England for giving us permission to carefully take seed from valuable places such as Braunton Burrows.

April 2023

The arrival of yellow rattle

Our investment in seed is carefully managed through its first winter. Some species germinate within weeks of being sown whilst others need a winter of cooling (this is called vernalisation) before the small energy reserves in the seed burst to life.

Grass growth is monitored, and grazing animals used to keep it short as Spring approaches. A warm Winter means the grass keeps growing and which can shade out the tiny wildflower seedlings.

This is the month Yellow Rattle starts to grow quickly, spreading its roots into neighbouring grasses and taking up nutrients. This weakens the grass and provides space for the other species sown to stake a claim in the new wildflower rich grassland, species such as, Knapweed and Birds Foot Trefoil.

October 2022

Rangers break ground

86 hectares (213 acres) is sown with 1.3 tonnes of specially selected seed. These fields (equivalent to 120 football pitches) over 3-7years, will become ‘donor’ sites, which will produce the seed needed to improve the variety of wildflowers in newly created habitat across 1,275 hectares (3,151 acres) of grassland that has been identified as have a low diversity and abundance of wildflowers.

This is a big step on our journey to create 25,000 hectares of priority habitat nationally on the land in our care by 2025. 5000ha of this will be in the South West.

July 2022

Project begins

Rangers gather information about their species poor grasslands to carefully choose suitable places and species to create their wildflower seed donor sites. Heritage features, soil type and chemistry, injurious weed and invasive burden, existing notable and protected species, statutory and non-statutory designations, and landscape value are all considered.

Growing the right seed in the right place is important to produce the wildflowers that North Devon’s unique habitats need.

Seed is harvested locally and purchased from reputable suppliers with careful attention paid to provenance.