Shetland shines

One of the first naturalists to capture my imagination was Bobby Tulloch of Shetland. His tales of otters and snowy owls captivated me, and brought a touch of the northern isles and ‘simmer dim’ into my New Town home in East Kilbride. Tulloch was, to borrow a good old Scottish phrase, a ‘Lad o’ Pairts’, an all-rounder, and his photographs of flowers and ferns suggests he probably had a keen eye for the less obvious and smaller species like pollinators.

A road verge managed for visibility and wildlife. Image courtesy of http://www.austintaylorphotography.com

Few of the actions that help pollinators embrace glitz or glamour. Often the actions that deliver most are cheap and easy, requiring minimal investment. Indeed, in many instances it is simply to manage things differently, to ease back a little, that makes a telling difference. 

Shetland Islands Council has taken a leaf from that book and introduced a few measures which give nature a helping hand.  For example, they have amended their roadside verge cutting policy.  This means verges are often only being cut for safety reasons, for example in visibility splays, at junctions, and where pedestrians require access to the verge so as they can easily step off the road to avoid approaching traffic. It’s a sensible and pragmatic approach.

Another welcome development is very much ‘on the money’ in terms of modern environmental actions. Shetland Islands Council has begun to replace some conventional street lighting with LED equivalents. This has brought a new look to many lamp-posts around Shetland. The new ‘down lighters’ are not only fantastic when it comes to reducing light pollution, but by being deliberately dimmed after midnight they deliver a further aid to local wildlife, especially night-flying pollinators such as moths. This sympathetic action adds a whole new meaning to ‘northern lights’.

Across Scotland altering mowing regimes on public greenspaces is an action that many councils are embracing. In Shetland this has caught hold too, with some large areas of grass, which were previously cut several times during summer months, now being left to grow naturally. It’s another rather simple, basic step, but one which is potentially a fantastic boost for biodiversity. In places the only cutting is beside footpaths, with a narrow edge strip being the only intervention needed. This leaves an extended area that was previously cut on a regular cycle, undisturbed for wild birds, insects and small mammals.

A bumblebee feeding. (c) Austin Taylor

Lerwick is Shetland’s largest community. Just over 7,000 people live in the town and they will have noticed the changes made at Jubilee Flower Park.  Originally waste ground, the park was created by the council in the early 1950s and rapidly became a popular spot. The Council has recently adopted a policy in the park of no chemical use when it comes to eradicating weeds. Instead, these are manually removed by hand and the park is rapidly becoming a sanctuary for wildlife. And that’s not the only change that has been eased in. Around the perimeter of the park, walls and fences are being used for growing a wide variety of climbing plants, which of course will provide shelter and a food source for invertebrates and birds.  On a windy island the walls are much appreciated, by people and nature.

Many will be familiar with the vibrant wildflowers that pepper Shetland, such as red campion and pink sea thrift. When it comes to gardening, however, the challenge is considerable. Yet to visit Jubilee Flower Park is to wander into a scene framed by a range of impressive plants. From elder, hebe and flowering currant, through to lupins, oxeye daisy and poppies there is floral variety that bees and other pollinators will eagerly exploit. 

There is a sense that Shetland is at the start of its pollinator journey, and the actions of today will hopefully be bolstered by increasing steps to help pollinators. With further improvements and refinements the picture should look increasingly rosy.

The Shetland Isles are rightly famed as a nature haven. Understandably there is a big focus on the fantastic bird life, the thrilling marine wildlife, but there is much more besides. Shetland Islands Council is doing its bit to help pollinators in what can be a testing environment. I’m pretty sure Bobby Tulloch would have approved of their efforts. 

Links:

Insects of the Shetland Isles

The bumblebees of Bressay

Irvine’s rich meadow mixes

I’m not great with Sat-Nav. On a recent trip to Irvine I had a difference of opinion with the technology and as a result missed my cut off. It was, however, a fortuitous mistake.  Soon I found myself driving through Troon where I passed stunning roadside verges. My day to visit the Irvine to Girvan Nectar Network was clearly going to be a success.

I was en route to join Scottish Wildlife Trust’s enthusiastic and energetic Lynne Bates for a trip around some of their highly impressive Nectar Network sites.  Lynne’s meadow knowledge, and botanical expertise, are a delight, and what followed was a perfect, glorious day in the sunshine.

Noisy gulls floated overhead, the flowers were blooming and the insects were out in force.  A day of discovery (for me) unfolded as we flitted from site to site absorbing the remarkable progress that has been made.

We began our tour by heading for Irvine Beach Park where we encountered a dragon.  Before you ask “Just how long was he out in the sun?”,  I should qualify that statement. Irvine beach park boast a fine stone dragon installation, and down the steep slopes beyond lie two different meadows adjacent to each other. 

Lynne explained that, although side by side, these meadows are quite different. “We established the dragon meadow in October 2020.” she explained, “We scarified a patch of land to create a meadow and sowed it with Scotia Seeds’ ‘Get Nectar-rich Quick mix’ as well as a generous helping of yellow rattle. The meadow showed reasonably well in 2021 and when we cut it at the end of the season we vowed to use the green hay to create another meadow. 

“This was to be located immediately beside the original meadow. So just across the vehicle tracks you can see an area that is quite different because we ploughed this additional half-hectare to continue our nectar corridor. From a compare and contrast angle it was good to use a different technique and different seed mix. The new area (which is closest to the dragon) was sown with the green hay as an experiment and the other half had our ‘Nectar Network mix’ sown.

“You can see they look quite different.  Yellow and white dominate in the original 2021 meadow, whereas the new meadow has more red clover, self-heal and even viper’s bugloss and as a result is full of blushing pinks and purples”

A quick scoot along the track took us towards the popular boating pond that sits at the town end of the park. Here you find a meadow that has caught the eye of many a photographer. Whilst we enjoyed the pollinator display that was going on all around us you could hear the approval and appreciation of several passers by. “Beautiful to look at”, “so colourful” and “a wonderful resource for bees, hoverflies and butterflies” were just some of the comments overheard.

How could we follow this floral feast?  Well, the simple answer is quite easily. A short trip took us on to Irvine’s Lawthorn and Sourlie meadows. The first thing the visitor would notice if comparing these meadows to those at the beach park is the amount of grass in the mix. Scotia Seeds’ Mavisbank Meadow mix has been used here and this gives what many of us would recognise as a traditional meadow mix, rather than something that is a bit more pictorial. 

At Sourlie the site, which was previously dogged by boggy patches, was ploughed and directly sown in October 2021 and this is its first summer. It is quite something to behold, and again pollinators were clearly attracted in good numbers. The plan is for a cut and lift exercise at the end of the season and the arisings will simply be taken to a quiet corner of what is a sizable site. 

That makes good environmental sense, as Lynne was keen to point out.  “We didn’t want to take things off site as our aim is to be as sustainable as possible. And it makes sense in another regard too as the council don’t have their own composting facilities. This year we may use the arisings as green hay.

“The first thing residents and visitors will notice is that  Lawthorn and Sourlie are quite different from the Irvine Beach meadows. A more traditional meadow mix has been used, it has a high percentage of grasses with more perennial flowers so is not as showy. Yet look closely and you will see yarrow, yellow-rattle, self-heal, buttercup, a little bit of ox-eye daisy plus the basal leaves of knapweed amongst the grasses.  The beach park meadow is more pictorial, no grasses were sown in that. We wanted a high visual impact on that site and went with a mix that was just purely flower seeds.  Although having said that we know the grasses will come gradually and naturally, but there is yellow rattle in there to help control things and that meadow is much more colourful having a range of annuals such as cornflower, poppies, corn marigold as well as the perennials like viper’s bugloss, yarrow and carrot.  

And so on to Little Acorns Forest school site in the grounds of what was once  Scotland’s Agricultural College facility. Here a conundrum faces the team behind the Irvine to Girvan network.  A new meadow has proved more than a little popular with red clover … it has run riot. A purple haze greets the visitor, great for bumble bees but perhaps not the mixed meadow that was anticipated. As Lynne summarised “It will be interesting to see how it develops. The thing with meadows is you have no guarantee of what you will get year to year really, you can’t do much about it until it arrives. It is exciting, and the anticipation and guessing about what will thrive is part of the joy. But we might need to intervene here to get floral diversity we had last year.”

Our floral tour had yet more delights to savour on South Ayrshire Council roadside verges at Barassie. These are certainly eye-catching. A detailed, yet subtle, sign lets residents know what is happening.  Meadows on a day like this look fantastic, but less so before and after they flower. Explaining the journey, and the environmental benefits, is a vital part of getting public acceptance and support.

As Lynne was keen to point out the councils in this area are great partners in the quest to create meadows and increase nectar provision. “The councils here are great to work with,” Lynne noted. “It works really well that they want to be able to manage these greenspaces much more sustainably, and that we want to provide a nectar network.  They can show that making meadows will save money, cut carbon emissions, deliver significant biodiversity benefits, and add community value through much more aesthetically pleasing spaces for locals.  I’ve heard nothing but praise for these approaches.”

We brought the curtain down on a series of excellent stops by calling in at Dundonald Links golf course.  With preparations for the Scottish Ladies Championship underway things were surprisingly quiet – but my what a site.  A new accommodation village is awash with pollinator planting, with each lodge separated from its neighbours by hummocks that give privacy and a wonderful swathe of nectar rich flowers. Bees and butterflies were plentiful.  Add to the scene a flower-rich driveway and the amazing green roof that tops the club house and you have a wonderful site for insects. Views over the water to Arran come as standard.

Perhaps it’s just as well I couldn’t programme ‘nectar network’ into my sat nav – I don’t think technology could cope with the sheer volume in this neck of the woods.

Nectar network

Good things are certainly happening in Ayrshire for pollinators. An impressive range of partners, with an equally impressive range of sites, are dramatically improving pollinator habitat, whilst introducing new audiences to the fascinating role of these vital insects.

Irvine beach Park Pond Meadow – (c) Lynne Bates

A vibrant combination of willing volunteers, enthusiastic partners and respected specialists bodes well for a winning combination, and this is certainly borne out by the Scottish Wildlife Trust-led Irvine to Girvan ‘Nectar Network’ along the Ayrshire coast.

Calling upon the expertise of environmental agencies, working closely with local councils, and harnessing the support of students and staff at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), the Nectar Network is a catalyst in expanding knowledge and skills to create and manage pollinator habitats

Last year volunteer surveyors were trained, kitted out and allocated sites along the coast to systematically monitor the biodiversity of the area. Methods employed included the increasingly popular Flower-Insect Timed (FIT) counts, allied to conventional transect walks, which allow for a better monitoring of the health of pollinators across the landscape. 

It is often said that habitat improvements and creation are the single most effective thing we can do to help pollinators. And there are so many examples in Ayrshire that it takes the breath away. Here’s a flavour of what’s been going on …

• The children at Symington Primary School sowed their own mini meadow with wildflowers and yellow rattle, helped by the enthusiastic South Ayrshire Rangers. 
• The Rotary Club of Prestwick enhanced an unused site next to Prestwick Railway Station, sowing wildflowers to provide food for pollinators and interest for commuters.
• Greenkeepers at The National Centre for Bowling, Ayr removed turf and sowed native wildflower seeds in two large areas within the grounds to encourage pollinators in the area.
• A new wildflower meadow at Little Acorns Forest School, Auchincruive created last year with the help of the children, volunteers and parents has been a colourful success. Providing opportunities for surveying and identification plus outdoor learning and creating a real buzz for pollinators and people.
• Two large new wildflower meadows created on public greenspaces in Irvine, adjacent to Scottish Wildlife Trust Wildlife Reserves, not only improves connectivity for species moving across the landscape but provides visual interest for locals visiting the sites. 
• Eglinton Community Gardens in North Ayrshire called upon the help of 36 employees from a local company to prepare and sow a large new meadow, increasing the abundance of forage and nesting opportunities.
• The new Pond Meadow sown in autumn 2020 at Irvine Beach Park was cut, collected and the green hay used to extend the Dragon Meadow. A total of two hectares of the park is now wildflower meadow habitat which will support a range of wildlife, food for pollinators and provide colour and visual interest for visitors to the park. 
• Over 400 trees were planted at Low Pinmore Farm to create a new flowering hedge to connect existing pollinator areas and provide vital food and nesting areas

By any measure that’s an impressive catalogue of activities. With so many partners and such a wide range of sites, Ayrshire certainly looks set to be an area where pollinators can thrive. However, that’s not all that’s been happening.

One growing area of interest focuses on the potential of roadside verges to help pollinators. 

Local volunteer surveyors were trained for a new partnership with Symington Community Council’s Wildflower Project. A great example of partnership working the project draws together Transport Scotland, Amey (who operate and maintain motorway and trunk road technology infrastructure across Scotland) and South Ayrshire Council in exploring ways to improve verge management for pollinators. 

The method is strikingly simple, yet effective. The grass verge on the outskirts of the village has been left to grow and will only be cut in late summer, in the meantime spring and summer will see weekly pollinator and plant survey undertaken by the volunteers to help to inform the next stage of the project. 

Coming on the back of Plantlife’s national drive to raise awareness of the potential of roadside verges for pollinators this is a fantastic development to see in Scotland.

Another key focus is the connection between Kidney Vetch and the Small Blue, Britain’s smallest butterfly. The Ayrshire Small Blue was given a boost last year, through support from the local Garnock Connections project. Kidney Vetch is the sole larval foodplant of the Small Blue so determining its current status along the Ayrshire coast is crucial. Working alongside Lynne Bates who is the Nectar Network Co-ordinator at Scottish Wildlife Trust was Butterfly Conservation’s Tom Prescott.

In a region famous for its golf courses, the work to protect and extend the range of sites supporting Kidney Vetch cleverly harnessed the knowledge of local greenkeepers and golf course managers. Detailed surveys determined the current status of Kidney Vetch, which also helps identify sites where more beneficial planting can take place.

The results were impressive, with over 40 people taking part in online training workshops, 33 volunteers surveying over a dozen sites, and no fewer than eight golf courses from Irvine to Troon getting involved.

As a result, kidney vetch was recorded at 116 locations, with over 3,500 plants being recorded. All in all, a staggering 55,000 flower or seed heads were counted. A student from SRUC is now analysing the survey forms to map the distribution (and gaps) to help steer future actions.

The Ayrshire coast is proving a hot spot for pollinator friendly activity and through sharing learning and knowledge with key organisations, partners, businesses and individuals, everyone is playing an important role in creating a network for pollinators.

Find out more @ Irvine to Girvan Nectar Network

Many thanks to Lynne Bates, who is the Nectar Network Co-ordinator at Scottish Wildlife Trust, for all her help with this article.

Little Acorns meadow July 2021 – (c) Emily Hamalainen

            Low Pinmore Farm hedge planting – (c) Lynne Bates

Kidney Vetch survey training Gailes Marsh Wildlife Reserve

Islay’s ideal idea

Every once in a while you come across a project that stands out for its clarity and impact.  I had this experience recently when holidaying in Islay.  The project in question aims to make most of this beautiful island’s roadside verges a rich habitat for pollinators. 

Inspired by the work of Plantlife, who had been advocating the value of verges for pollinators, the team behind the Islay Natural History Trust set to work.  Linking up with supportive staff at Argyll & Bute Council, a plan was hatched to trial a change in verge cutting practices.

The idea was simple yet effective.  To leave verges to flower, and only cutting late in the season after the plants have set seed and finished flowering. It’s a strategy that is gathering momentum across local authorities and is a welcome development for our hard-pressed pollinating insects.

The Islay Natural History Trust teamed up with The Botanist Foundation and embarked on a two-year study of some of the less travelled routes on the Rhinns area of the island. Around 100 km of roadside verges were surveyed in 2017 and 2018. This allowed the Trust to assess the plant species they had and how pollinators were making use of them. They then persuaded the Council to adopt a new approach to verge management. 

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If successful, the initiative will create a range of benefits – the floral diversity will be improved, pollinators will have more food, grass will no longer dominate verges, and there will be savings in verge management.

The group is mindful of the details as well as ‘the big picture’, and particularly protective of verges that provide space for orchids around Port Wemyss and Portnahaven, for example. By relaxing mowing regimes, these orchids will flower, with discretionary and flexible verge cutting by volunteers to ensure road safety.

Portnahaven

Of course verges can vary, even across a single island. That’s why one area is subject to a trial seeding of Yellow Rattle to tackle grasses which largely created a major need for cutting in the first place and would ultimately subdue other plants. Yellow Rattle is an annual plant typically found in ancient meadows. Its roots latching onto those of surrounding grasses and pulling nutrients from their roots. For those concerned that Yellow Rattle might ‘run amok’, the group have stressed that sowing is only within the one metre strip that the council currently cuts. This small sub-project was set out to seed up to 4 km of verges around the of Loch Gorm and Gruinart area. The group will be able to observe what impact the introduction of ‘the meadow maker’ has.

By supressing dominant grasses, the height of verge growth should be lessened and this in turn reduces the need for mid-season cutting. The fuel saving will be a step down the road to reducing the carbon footprint associated with verge management.

Some footpath verges have also been transformed into pollinator-friendly routes

And of course when the grasses are suppressed, other plants move in. Chief amongst them from a pollinator perspective are clovers, yarrow, oxeye daisy, lesser knapweed and meadow vetchling. 

There is also something to be said also for the ‘transport corridor’ approach, which is gaining traction in the central belt.  Basically florally rich verges can act as route for pollinators to move through landscapes, and in an island not short on swathes of sheep-grazed pasture and barley filled fields, the verges can offer a lifeline.

That’s a fittingly optimistic note to end on. The work in Islay is an inspiration and could be a model to help pollinators across the country. Indeed, as you might often say on Scotland’s whisky island … “Cheers!”

Find out more about the Islay survey in their publication – The Islay Pollinator Initiative

Islay, isle of stunning beaches and increasingly impressive verges

Things can only get better

The infrastructure in and around our built environment can help society tackle issues as crucial as biodiversity loss and climate change.  Raingardens are an enlightened infrastructure solution offering multiple benefits.  The good news is that Scotland has shown a keen interest in the concept of raingardens, as a standard method of dealing with surface water management, flood alleviation and greenspace creation.

It is probably safe to say that in Scotland we take a steer from successful projects based in Melbourne, Philadelphia and Portland, where there has been a growing acceptance of the value of raingardens as a viable answer to water management and environmental challenges.

The Kinross-shire Civic Trust Raingardens Challenge is an ambitious project which seeks to harness the potential of using greenspace wisely in our town and villages to create a bank of raingardens which are valuable landscape features whilst soaking up rainfall draining off roads, roofs and other impervious areas. 

Raingardens are certainly as desirable from a practical perspective as they are an aesthetic one. Incidences of flash flooding have increased alarmingly in recent years, and a deal of concern has been centred on the significant impact of the growth of hard landscaping approaches in domestic and industrial settings.

Raingardens are vegetated features designed to slow down and use rainwater. They use plants, soils and the landscape to hold onto the rainwater and then slowly release it. They also help reduce the amount of water which gets to the sewer. Some water is taken up by the plants, some rainwater finds its way back down into the ground, and some water will evaporate. Raingardens also help clean the water, which may have picked up dirt from the roofs and roads.

The objective of the Raingarden Challenge encompasses improvements such as adding wildflower and grassland areas along with more traditional planting with a wetland emphasis.  This multi-layered response is sensibly flexible to suit individual circumstances, but the consistent goal is the need to soften a built environment which at its most harsh can deliver a landscape often almost devoid of plants.  Sympathetically planted and naturally-sculpted landscapes can effectively absorb rainfall runoff, thus contributing notably to managing increasing flood risks.  When carefully designed, raingardens visibly help mitigate the potential impact of flash floods which are a disturbing reality as climate change bites home.

There is general acceptance now that the presence of planted areas assists the absorption of rainfall draining quickly from a hard-surface. Indeed a good example of this approach can be found in the Kinross area where wildflower swale has been installed at the edge of the link road in West Kinross. The consensus is that the impact is extremely positive.

The Kinross-shire Raingardens Challenge has an admirable sense of proportion and realism. They know they can’t deliver everything working in isolation. They are thus actively engaging with Perth and Kinross Council, local businesses, and individuals to see if they can encourage partners to consider installing raingardens or making modifications to their drainage systems which would deliver improved rainwater management. 

To this end they have invited business to get in touch with them if they suffer from a regularly flooded car park, for example, with a view to persuading the next solution to avoid simply going for a conventional reinstatement by exploring options to see if there is a viable raingarden solution.

Likewise if residents notice a road gully which is regularly failing, the group suggests communities contact their local councillors to probe the possibility of considering a raingarden instead.

Kinross-shire folks can certainly be persuasive. They recently worked with the famous Loch Leven’s Larder on an innovative way to transform the popular visitor attraction’s carpark into a series of small raingardens, and are actively working with the Kinross Estate (particularly the Green Hotel in Kinross) and others.  

Progress has been delayed by COVID, but agreements to pick up a.s.a.p. are encouraging. The Kinross-shire initiative is following a broad and inclusive definition of a raingarden: “ green infrastructure feature designed to accept rainfall runoff”.  Solutions are best when the features are linked to more optimal green features (grassland, hedgerows or woodland for example). Verdant verges can complement a roadside swale, especially if forming a gentle fringe to merge into the swale. In a recent survey some of the area’s local country road verges fell under the microscope. 

The results were interesting. In Carnbo (near Crook of Devon) 96 species were counted along a section of the Gelvan road, and over 70 species were logged near Westfield. In both examples water was able to run off tarmac into various verge types and several of the ditches examined were found to contain marsh species and tall grass species.

There is an admirable realism rooted in the Kinross-shire Raingardens project. The group are keen to acknowledge and celebrate good practice by participating businesses and households. Through a series of awards the intention is to convince more and more observers to see the value of going down this route. Nevertheless, not every green infrastructure project succeeds first time, or indeed every time, and this is acknowledged by a commitment to include ongoing managements and restoration of failed projects in their approach.

When the group issued a newsletter article recently they ran with the catchy headline of “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a raingarden”.  Based on their practical approach and sound vision they might need to dust down another upbeat song title– perhaps, the line from D:Reams ‘Things can only get better’ might appeal?

Further Reading:

Find out more from Brian D’Arcy via b.darcy@btinternet.com see NatureScot’s guidance on including green infrastructure solutions in the Planning and Construction sector 

And the joint WWT/RSPB publication on SuDS: 

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Images courtesy and copyright of Brian D’Arcy