Biodiversity protects plants

If there's one thing that Mother Nature hates more than an empty space, it's a monoculture ;and according to recent research, one of the reasons for this self-defence.

Consider the great British lawn, the vegetable plot or the farmer's field, or indeed, anywhere where humans try to grow just one type of plant; Mother Nature will always do her utmost to introduce some other species. We call them weeds and fight like billio to get rid of them screaming "they're competing for water and nutrients, they must die!"

A wildflower meadow with many plant species all mixed in together

Now think about a more biodiverse space, perhaps a border in a cottage garden or maybe a wildflower meadow. There may be an occasional rogue plant but so long as the overall plant population is fairly dense and the nutrient levels in the soil are well balanced and sensible, it's unusual for weeds to be problematic.

a critter that might become a pest elsewhere is not a major
problem in a biodiverse meadow

Likewise, pests and diseases don't seem to get out of hand. It's almost as though some of the plants just don't get noticed by predators and pathogens. Whilst slugs, snails, aphids and pigeons decimate my vegetable patch, they all visit my mini -meadow and some seem to dwell there, yet the sward stays thick, robust and healthy.

On a green roof, where poor  planning and lack of maintenance results in a monoculture, it would only take one season of really bad weather or an attack by pests that thrive on the single remaining species to kill off all of the vegetative layer.

A study by biologists at the University of Guelph finds that greater species diversity in an area helps ecosystems avoid irreversible collapse after human disturbances. The team compared areas of mostly grasses with areas of mixed grasses and native plants. In a ten-year study plots were selectively burnt. The scientists found that seemingly stable single species grassland plots burned most intensely, collapsed after one growing season and were subsequently overrun by tree species.

The mixed grass and native species plots were less likely to burn intensely and resisted the tree invasion.

So have farmers and gardeners been getting it all wrong by cultivating single species plots to improve yields? Hard to say really.  It all depends who you're talking to. In the vegetable garden (and in the flower garden) I'd say yes.....it is possible to grow marigolds alongside carrots to avoid carrot-fly or nasturtiums with beans to distract aphids.  But, having been married to a farmer for a very long time, I'm pretty sure that companion planting wouldn't be practical on a field scale.

Scientists may tell us that a few extra species in a field of peas or wheat will prove advantageous in the long run but they're not the ones driving the harvesters or trying to store the crop.....modern technology has helped keep food prices down but it only works well where the crop is a monoculture and that means using selective  herbicides and pesticides. It would be wonderful if we could feed the world by foraging, hunting and simple farming and gardening - but we won't achieve the volumes and prices would be humungous.

large fields and huge machines lead to economies
of scale and allow for cheaper food production

May we should shrink the machines, divide up the prairie sized fields and return to medieval strip farming....ie a strip of wheat will be bordered by peas on one side, beet on the other side. We'd see a radical change in our countryside and food production would become very, very expensive. 

It seems as though the preservation of our biodiversity can only be tackled practically and effectively by gardeners, local authorities, highways departments, railway companies, buildings managers and developers. Let the farmers grow food but continue to encourage them to allow woodland, hedgerow, roadside and meadow plants to thrive.  In the meantime, we'll do as much as we can to reinstate green spaces and flower beds, to create green roofs and plant as many different plants species as we can in every bare space.  The bees will certainly thank us. And as a result, the plants will protect our food supply, our wildlife and.......the other plants.

Mowing my meadow has increased biodiversity

A hay meadow in Norfolk ready for cutting
most of the flowers have already set seed

It's never easy to attack a lovely wild flower meadow with a sharp instrument that will take away the flowers and the vegetation and leave what looks like a shaggy, weedy lawn, but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

I was late giving my Meadowmat its annual trim this year.  Two reasons, one I've injured my neck and needed to persuade my husband to do the deed (never easy, he hates gardening as much as I hate ironing); plus, I couldn't bring myself to chop the flowers off the yarrow, clover and vetch.  Nevertheless, the deed was done a couple of weeks ago.  The hay has been removed and used to fill the nest boxes in the chicken coop and I've had a pleasant surprise.

My Meadowmat was installed in spring 2011.  In the first summer, it was quite grassy but managed to supply the local bees with some yellow rattle, some clover flowers, a couple of oxeye daisies and a yarrow or two.   It was allowed to grow unchecked until July 2011 and then it was cut back and all the clippings made into hay.  From september last year until the end of march this year, I periodically zoomed over the Meadowmat with my rotary mower on its highest setting and took away all of the clippings for composting.

Meadowmat in it's second summer

This summer I was rewarded with a beautiful floral display.  Yellow rattle, clover, birdsfoot trefoil, vetch, yarrow, wild carrot, sorrell, plantain and knapweed were the main contenders AND there was a lot less grass than in the previous summer, especially in the two patches where the yellow rattle was doing well.  Sadly, there weren't enough bees to enjoy the meadow to the full.  But heyho, that's the British weather for you.

Oh dear, my newly cut Meadowmat looks awful
(happily it's recovered a bit since this photo was taken)

Leaving the mowing/strimming until mid august perhaps wasn't a good move though.  The grass had been battered by rainstorms, fallen over and looked as though it had smothered some of the plants beneath it.  But, once again, Nature triumphed over adversity as two weeks on, I can see that the floral plants are regenerating nicely...there are even a few different leaf shapes in the mix, so maybe some surprises next year...but the grasses are still thinking about re-growing.

I am convinced that mowing the meadow increases it's biodiversity.  On the Meadowmat production field,
Robert regularly mows the grass .... it's easier to roll up and despatch if the vegetation is short...and he tells me that after each cut, he sees less grass and more flowering species.

I've heard tell that it takes seven years to establish a species rich meadow from seed. I would like to think that by using Meadowmat I fast forwarded the process by at least one or two years, but that does still mean that things can only get better.  Whoohoo can't wait to see what next summer has in store.

How building supplies can benefit wildlife

98% of our species rich meadows have disappeared, pollinating insects are fewer and further between and UK biodiversity is in decline so how come I'm bigging up building supplies instead of blaming them for burying our wildlife underneath roads, retail parks, houses and car parks?
Well yes, I do think that builders and even landscapers could be a bit, no a lot, more sympathetic to nature...include green roofs, natural lawns, hedges and SUDS in their developments. But yesterday I saw probably the most wildlife I've seen in a long while, all crammed into an area that was once a gravel pit supplying Suffolk with aggregates.

I took a ride out to Lackford Lakes near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, it's currently run by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, it's free to visit and it's home to vast numbers of dragonflies and wild flowers.  It's not easy to see wild creatures when you're accompanied by a boisterous seven year old boy with a voice like a foghorn but at least the wildflowers weren't able to take flight when they heard him approaching.

We spotted several different species and Justin loved running from plant to plant checking for snails (what IS it with small boys and snails?) and the caterpillars of cinnabar moths that were munching their way through the ragwort population.

So this once barren site that was ravaged by the aggregate industry has been returned to Mother nature and she's loving it.  I wonder, if it had never been turned into a gravel pit, would this still be an intensively farmed field with minimal interest for wildlife.  So maybe, just for once, the building industry has done Nature a favour.
http://www.meadowmat.com/