Anyone here know about such stuff?

We have put in Southampton Bike Park and let the grass grow a little but still strimmer it when it gets a bit long.

We are getting feedback that

A) We should keep the whole area cut short like the surrounding cricket and football pitches
B) We shouldn’t keep the whole area cut as we are killing the plants.

Given that there are only a couple of us doing the maintenance and paying for the strimmer, petrol and anything else I am generally in favour of less maintenance.

Having said that I would like some facts to support me. How do I do/get someone to do a biodiversity study of the Bike Park compared to the same area on the other side of the path?

What do we look for?
What is good/bad?

We have bee nests if that helps…

If anyone has suggestions then please help as we are going for the next phase and want to have evidence that we are doing good.

If anyone can help us in Southampton then that is even more welcome.

Cheers

WCA

Have a chat with Southampton uni and get some of their ecology bods to do a survey, or maybe even ask the councils environmental people to have a look… My plant I’d is waaaaay off as I’ve not done any for years otherwise I’d offer to help. One thing, if it’s proper wild flowers that you planted, is to do a single late summer cut, thus allowing the plants to seed. If not and its just grass then keep it down…

Late summer cut and remove cut grass. Keep short through the winter. If you want to enhance the plant diversity a hay meadow seed mix is what you’re after.

^^wot he said 🙂

Daftvaders idea of seeing if any ecology students want to look at it for a project is a good one.
Had I not lost the ability to drive this summer due to beings as accident probe as yourself I could have taken a look for you. Although I threw my quadrat away about 10 yrs ago!

We haven’t planted anything so it is all self seeding. I might have a sord with Southampton University as their bike club use it and they are probably free

Personally I’d be tempted to just keep the grass from encroaching on the bike tracks and leave the rest.

We planted some wild flowers / grass mix and that needs maintaining too, cutting at certain times of year etc. We didn’t get it right and all the diversity of flowing plants was lost after 2 years. It felt as much work as the lawn !

Tou’ve done tons of work to get where you are don’t make more for yourself. My 2 cents

Plantlife have some helpful advice on their website. They recommend leaving some areas un-mown, then just mowing once at the end of summer. http://www.plantlife.org.uk/wildflower_garden/mynomow/

If getting a wildflower seed mix, check whether it is actually all native and local provenance, and suited to your site.

As a-a said, just do the hay meadow thing. Don’t rush to use seeds, interesting stuff may appear from existing seeds in the soil.

We planted some wild flowers / grass mix and that needs maintaining too, cutting at certain times of year etc. We didn’t get it right and all the diversity of flowing plants was lost after 2 years. It felt as much work as the lawn !

Most likely they were out competed by the grasses due to raised soil fertility not the cutting. To have a good level of plant diversity you need low soil fertility.

Don’t rush to use seeds, interesting stuff may appear from existing seeds in the soil.

This is quite unlikely. Although spending a few years cutting and removing the clippings will help knock back the fertility for when you do add seed.

I helped on a survey on Chalk Downs recently. A pine plantation had been cut down sometime previously. There remained 15- to 18-inch stumps. Between them the native stuff was appearing, most noticeably butterfly orchids. Now these may have hung on in the poor light as plants, not seeds, but there they were. You’ll never know until you try.

We are not planning on planting stuff and want minimum maintenance.

There is just noticeably more different plants growing there at the moment than there were before.

I thought that knowing what had established itself might inform the maintenance that we do at the moment. Also might help defend ourselves against those saying it should be mowed like a cricket pitch

Biodiversity aside I would just suggest anyone with a strong opinion on mowing the grass frequently get on with it themselves.

anyone with a strong opinion on mowing the grass frequently get on with it themselves.

Damn right. It takes ages to strim the whole bike park