Wilding our Parks case study - Edinburgh report

Edinburgh Living Landscape – introducing native wildflower meadows along Edinburgh’s Cramond Foreshore

Site: Gypsy Brae and Cramond Foreshore
Location: 55.979546, -3.282747
Site type: Public parks and gardens
Secondary type: Amenity grassland, Green corridors/networks, Recreational/sports area, Foreshore
Management responsibility: City of Edinburgh Council
Naturalisation type: Grassland naturalisation/wildflower meadows
Project partners: City of Edinburgh Council, University of Edinburgh, Scottish Wildlife Trust, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, NatureScot, Butterfly Conservation Edinburgh, RSPB Scotland

Links

Tags/Themes

Grassland naturalisation, Native wildflower meadow, Pictorial/floral meadow, Woodland, Public Parks & Gardens, Amenity greenspace, Green corridors/networks, Recreational/sports area, Foreshore

Thumbnail introduction

Since 2016, the Edinburgh Living Landscape partnership has been introducing naturalised grassland management and planting native flower meadows along Edinburgh’s shoreline. This initiative has enjoyed increasing community support, collected long-term scientific data on biodiversity benefits and developed guidelines for maritime meadow mix composition and management.

Introduction

Gypsy Brae and Cramond foreshore was one of the first sites developed under the Edinburgh Living Landscape programme, which started in 2014/2015. Its long-term vision is to make the city one of the most sustainable in Europe by 2050 to benefit local people and wildlife. This includes integrating nature into parks, greenspaces, gardens and neighbourhoods across the city. Initial sites for naturalisation and meadow creation were chosen through a city-wide initiative to identify suitable city-managed grassland sites. Areas considered included grass banking and verges, grasslands under urban trees and seldom-used areas. Gypsy Brae and Cramond Foreshore fitted this, as well as representing a foreshore location.

The continued naturalisation of Edinburgh’s shoreline is also a part of the Wild Line project, which started in 2019 and is led by the Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh working with several partners.

The work at Gypsy Brae and Cramond Foreshore brought together the City of Edinburgh Council and University of Edinburgh to manage the integration of planted meadows of native provenance Scottish wildflowers into naturalised grasslands along the Edinburgh foreshore. The overall aim is to increase the habitat available to a wide range of wildlife, including insect pollinators and seed- and insect-eating birds. Collecting long-term data on meadow performance and biodiversity has been used to generate guidelines for meadow mix composition and management.

Drivers for naturalisation

The main drivers were:

  • To be an urban exemplar of the Living Landscape approach across land/estate management, by bringing ‘Nature in your Neighbourhood’ to sites across the city
  • Edinburgh’s biodiversity and sustainability policy requirements and actions
  • Climate change adaption
  • Increasing biodiversity and creating healthier urban ecosystems
  • Cost reductions were a driver at the time, although the project has proven cost neutral to date because management investment has been redirected, rather than reduced.

What has been delivered?

An extensive area of naturalised grassland has been introduced, together with about 5500m2 of mixed perennial/annual native wildflower meadow:

  • 2016 – one x 500m2 meadow delivered as part of Edinburgh Living Landscape
  • 2021 – eight x 500m2 meadows funded by the Wild Line project
  • 2022 – three x 500m2 meadows planted with funding from the Scottish Government’s 2021 Nature Restoration Fund

Interpretation signs include Wild about Flowers, which shows the location of all eight wildflower meadows and provides more information about the plant species in the seed mix. There is also signage at each meadow area but this is not permanent signage.

How was it done and by whom?

Scottish Wildlife Trust, City of Edinburgh Council, University of Edinburgh, Butterfly Conservation Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh and RSPB Scotland are partners in the Edinburgh Living Landscape programme.

City of Edinburgh Council have responsibility for:

  • site selection and management
  • training and supporting staff in altered management practices
  • GIS mapping to plan locations
  • community consultation and ongoing communication

University of Edinburgh, Institute of Evolutionary Biology have responsibility for:

  • site surveys by botanists to finalise meadow locations
  • long term monitoring of plants and pollinators
  • development of maritime seed mix with Scotia Seeds

Royal Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh are the project lead for the Wild Line project.

The 2021 Wild Line funded wildflower meadows at Gypsy Brae and Cramond Foreshore were sown in April with a diversity of species that were carefully selected to benefit insect pollinators.

A native maritime seed mix was developed by University of Edinburgh in collaboration with Scotia Seeds. During 2022 this will be used again in the new meadow areas, along with extensive planting of native flowering trees along the existing woodland margin.

Cost of the project

Funding for the Wild Line project came from NatureScot’s Biodiversity Challenge Fund: £41,485 was used for the work at Gypsy Brae and Cramond Foreshore.

The wildflower meadow maintenance is more expensive and involved, offering no direct cost savings, compared to a grassland meadow. However, the biodiversity benefits of introducing a linked meadow chain along the shoreline takes priority and is why the meadows have been introduced.

How was the flower meadow established?

The Council followed recommended protocols provided by Scotia Seeds with the seed mix.

Weed removal: Existing vegetation was mown short and treated with a fast-acting and short half-life glyphosate herbicide. This was necessary to reduce invasion of the planted meadows by deep-rooted perennial weeds such as docks and thistles. In small quantities these add to the floral value of the meadows, and herbicide treatments reduce but do not remove them entirely.

Soil preparation and seed sowing: The top 4cm of soil was removed from all meadow sites with an agricultural turfcutter to reduce the existing seedbank, and so facilitate the establishment and longevity of the planted meadows. A second application of glyphosate was made after removal of this top layer of soil to further reduce deep-rooted weeds. The bare soil was then rotavated to create a fine tilth for mechanical seed sowing.

Seed mix: The maritime meadow mix that was developed contains a combination of annual and perennial species that deliver nectar and pollen from late April to early October. The mix contains a range of flower types that make food available to pollinators spanning the full range from short-tongued flies, beetles, sawflies and solitary bees, through to long-tongued butterflies, bee-flies and bees. Yellow rattle seed was added to suppress grass growth, and plug planting was used where establishment from seed was poor. The detail of the seed mix is available on request – it consists of 23.5% wildflowers to 76.5% grasses.

Staff training: Workshops were held for all staff on how naturalised grasslands and meadows should be managed. The new regime involves not cutting the whole site as often as traditionally undertaken, but still maintaining a ‘managed’ appearance. Refresher training will be available on request.

How is it looked after and maintained?

During the cutting season, maintenance included cutting pathways in the naturalised grassland sites and cutting the edges every few weeks. The naturalised grass areas typically receive one cut a year in the Autumn, although this is not always the case. The wildflower meadows were mown once in October in 2021, prior to sowing with yellow rattle seed.

In subsequent years, the wildflower meadows will be left unmown through the winter to provide seeds and invertebrate food to birds and small mammals and will be mown in early spring.

Several meadows were heavily affected by invasion of non-mix plants – particularly creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense), broadleaved dock (Rumex obtusifolius) and hedge mustard (Sisymbrium officinale). If left unmanaged, these plants will dominate and so they are weeded by hand when necessary, on an ongoing basis.

To manage the naturalised grassland, new flail cutting decks were bought for the council’s ride on/tractor machinery. These are ideal for cutting longer grass as they deposit the cut materials almost like a mulch, thus reducing unsightly piles of arisings. No grass arisings were removed from the site.

The meadows were managed with a ‘cut and remove’ protocol to reduce soil richness, which benefits wildflower diversity and slows invasion of meadow plots by nutrient-hungry grasses and weeds (such as nettles). The meadows have a 10-year management compliance period as part of the funding award.

What long term monitoring is the University of Edinburgh doing?

As part of the Wild Line project, the University of Edinburgh is leading a five-year monitoring programme for flowers and pollinators. This involves five surveys of each meadow site through each year (May to September), with matched surveys of areas of naturalised grassland next to each meadow. The monitoring is intended to assess the success of meadow establishment, and the value of the coastal wildflower meadows to different pollinator groups, particularly to butterflies and bumblebees. This will enable better understanding of the combination of naturalised grassland alongside planted flower meadows, in relation to their direct benefit to pollinators.

Over the course of 2021 (the first year of monitoring), almost five times as many flowers and three times as many pollinators were counted in the planted meadows compared to the same area of naturalised grassland. Interestingly, the difference varied across the season: in May, the naturalised grassland had a higher abundance of flowers and pollinators than the meadows.

The 2021 surveys recorded 8,724 pollinators and 43,943 flowers. Each survey round consists of sampling flowers and grasses in twenty 1m2 squares of vegetation and counting pollinators along a 50m2 line. The five survey rounds per year are designed to:

  • assess the contribution of each plant species in a plot to the sugar and pollen available to pollinators
  • quantify the visitation rate of different pollinator groups to each plant species, and so identify those most favoured.

The University can compare the food value of the meadow areas as they have already researched and estimated the nectar sugar values and pollen volumes per flower species in the seed mix, as well as for common local weed species, and can thus convert flower counts into estimates of the total nectar and pollen offered to pollinators; and then directly compare the value of meadows to non-meadow sites. Bumblebees, honeybees, butterflies and the most abundant hoverflies are being identified and recorded, with other hoverflies, sawflies and beetles being allocated to group data.

Because there is a direct link between flower nectar and pollen resources and pollinator population growth, the management combination of naturalising grassland and planted meadows will have direct benefits for pollinators and, through them, for surrounding native plants.

In 2021, the surveys required 6 person-weeks of fieldwork. The Wild Line project covered materials and equipment to enable this but the Professor’s role and work of the team of undergraduates that carried out monitoring is unfunded.

Benefits from the project

Gypsy Brae and Cramond Foreshore has been transformed from an area of low biodiversity, amenity grassland into a site that is more attractive and interesting for people, as well as for nature.

This network of species-rich perennial meadow in a matrix of naturalised grassland means:

  • reduced grass cutting with reduced costs of the maintained areas of grassland
  • a reduction in CO2 release due to less cutting, which also helps lock up carbon in the soil
  • increased biodiversity as birds, mammals and insects are attracted to wilder and more natural areas
  • added colour to the cityscape with the planting of flowering species

Councillors gave their approval to the Edinburgh Living Landscape programme in 2014 and continue to give ongoing support.

A city-wide consultation canvasing residents’ views on the Edinburgh Living Landscape programme was undertaken at the start of 2021. At the start of the programme in 2014, there was some resistance to the plans, but now public feedback encourages the council to expand on what they are doing and they now only receive a handful of complaints each year.  

“Visitors love the meadows! Working on the meadows and talking to visitors about what we are doing and why, has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.”
Professor Graham Stone, University of Edinburgh

Issues and challenges

The main issue has been around communication with the public. People used to areas being maintained for ‘tidiness’ rather than biodiversity. The team has learnt that it is important to inform them of the changes they will see in greenspace management, and the reasons behind the changes.

  • After initial scepticism and some opposition, there has been broad acceptance and increased awareness of why the changes have been made
  • Now some feedback from the public is that the council is “not doing enough” to support biodiversity
  • Cost reductions have not been realised due to the different way (rather than a reduced way) the greenspace is managed
  • Timing and funding deadlines are a big issue, as the seasons and weather often do not align or comply with financial year reporting or delivery requirements!

Learning and advice

Informative signage, and interaction with volunteers working on the site, are the two best ways to spread information and understanding to the general public:

  • Updatable signage should be provided via QR codes placed by the meadows and other areas of interest, linked to a dynamic and regularly updated website – this needs appropriate support and adequate funding.
  • High quality and informative signage is expensive, yet crucial. It can seem the easiest thing to cut from budgets and grant applications. Due to lack of resources, much of the early signage was temporary in nature, and it frequently went missing. 
  • Public engagement and consultations must be consistent and ongoing. Community engagement and participation from Friends Groups, community groups, schools, and individuals must be prioritised.
  • Communication and explanation of landscape management changes to elected members and staff are also crucial.

Next steps 

Early in 2022, the site will be planted with about 300 trees from the Woodland Trust. The species (Hawthorn, Blackthorn/Sloe, Cherry Prunus avium, Rowan, Crab apple and Hazel) have been selected to broaden the biodiversity benefit of existing sites by a gradual naturalisation and expansion. Three new meadow plots will also be established on this site, bringing the total to twelve. This work is part of the Daisy Chain project which has been funded by Nature Restoration Funding received in 2021. The funding allows the University of Edinburgh to continue to be involved in the research and monitoring of these new meadows.

Project contact

Stephen MacGregor, Parks Technical Officer, City of Edinburgh Council.