02-09-2017: Grass grass everywhere…

We had our first biodiversity event of the new term on Saturday. University volunteers were joined by the Environment Trust’s Duke of Edinburgh volunteers to manage two habitats of grassland at Kingston Hill. The first – our acid grassland by the school of Music; the second – an area of established invasive bamboo by the Kingston Hill Pond.

Our acid grassland at Kingston Hill has been dominated by non-specialist wildflowers in two thirds of the area. While we have tried to adapt our mowing regimen to favour the acid grassland species, mowing alone hasn’t worked, so we’re going to try something new.

In such situations, the normal course of action would involve stripping off the top layer of turf and allowing natural colonisation from nearby habitats. However, this wouldn’t be a practical solution in this area which is heavily used for amenity as well as wildlife.

Students and staff enjoying the meadow in the early summer

The new method that we’ll be trialling is a low visual impact method, were we combine mowing in August, patch scrapes of the turf layer with reseeding to create islands of acid grassland throughout the more dominate sward.

Volunteers raking off loss cuttings and removing patches of turf on the meadow by the music school

We’ll then repeat this process each year in new areas, to hopefully bring back the balance to acid grassland species. 

Team meadow: Volunteers standing over the small patches of re-seeded soil

Watering the newly seeded areas at the end of the day

Our new long term project will combine mowing as well as active seeding – using seeds for acid grassland species which are currently found on the site, increasing their number while reducing the seeding of the more generalist species.  We’ll keep you updated on any other techniques we use and the outcome as the project progresses. 

Team bamboo working to clear a large stand of the bamboo next to the pond

The second task of the day was to continue with our efforts to clear away invasive bamboo from the area near the pond. 

The biggest of the grass species, bamboos include some of the fastest growing plants on the planet, with some species growing up to 91cm in a 24 hr period during the growing season. In contrast species in more temperate climates can grow between 3-10cm in a day.

Previous clearance work had created a very large insect hotel within the clearing. Our aims were to continue to add to and create a new insect hotel in previously cleared areas while breaking through to the pond edge. 

Breaking through to the other side

Thought we didn’t completely break through, we made fantastic progress, we’ll give this area a final push this year during our pond maintenance event on Saturday 14th October at Kingston Hill. 

Progress in getting rid of the bamboo - just a bit more to go...

We always need help with our events, if you are interested in getting out and getting active, and this sounds like your cup of tea, join us by emailing me at biodiversity@kingston.ac.uk to sign up to the event. 

We always provide snacks for volunteers and you can normally spot wildlife around the areas we work in. 

Wildlife watching during a well-deserved break

Male Common Darter dragonfly spotted at the Kingston Hill pond along with other wildlife on the day