We are very excited to announce that we will be working with the Malvern Hills National Landscape this summer and autumn to support thirteen different grassland managers across the National Landscape with grassland surveying, soil sampling and grassland restoration works. In total we plan to carry out botanical surveys at 11 sites and will create just under 15ha of new, species rich grasslands across 6 different sites using locally harvested donor seed.

New Assistant Meadows Adviser, Jane Phillips, collecting soil samples 

We have already begun the work by taking soil samples from the restoration sites to check the nutrient levels are sufficiently low to support successful species establishment. We are carrying out botanical baseline surveys at 7 sites in order to allow for change over time to be quantitively assessed going forward. We are also assisting with the re-surveying of 4 sites which were restored last year or have had a significant change in management.

We will harvest all of the seed for the restoration works using our brush seed harvester from 4 local sites included two SSSI grassland sites.

The project is supported by DEFRA’s Farming in Protected Landscapes Programme.