Taming the corner meadow

A smaller group today with Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, perhaps because of the baking temperatures expected in the middle of the day. So instead of the planned hay cut of the corky fruited meadow, we decided to focus on the other end by the A38 gate. The rest of the team took scythes and rakes to clear the overgrown towpath, while I took the brush cutter to the landscaped corner which we attempted to seed earlier in the year, but which was now entirely taken over by dominant species and hardly any grass. We had great success on the strip on the other side of the fence, which was seeded last winter and has been fenced off to cattle (and humans). The idea would be to recreate this same habitat on this corner. So the main job today was to cut low, remove the nutrient and prepare for when the ground is hopefully wetter in October to seed. Grassland over the path The cut was pretty straightforward – I managed to make long parallel strips of arisings which could be more easily forked…