Visitors to Sunbury Park over the past weekend may have noticed some activities around the two wildflower exclosures. The Friends of Sunbury Park, following a suggestion by the Borough Biodiversity Officer submitted a successful grant application to The Surrey Nature Recovery Fund for a project to renovate and renew the wildflower areas.
The two exclosures were installed in around 2015 when the cows were first introduced to Sunbury Park and were originally to be there for about 5 years. However, over the past 11 years they have continued to provide some welcome seasonal colour to the park and helped to improve the local biodiversity.
Although The Friends continue to conduct seasonal maintenance, recent results have not been what we would wanted, so the decision was made to concentrate resources and to start again.
We decided to concentrate our efforts in one exclosure only. Subsequently, the northern area has been discontinued and will be left to go fallow. The southern exclosure has been expanded to twice its size. The area has been brush cut and rotovated (we did not realise how sandy the soil was) and fresh appropriate wildflower seed will be sown. A full list is available on request.
We have chosen: A dry sandy loam and an enrich & restore mix, an insect pollinator mix, a wild bird mix and a 100% Yellow Rattle mix to parasitise and reduce the underlying couch grass.
This project will allow The Friends of Sunbury Park to increase and improve awareness of nature in Sunbury Park. The Friends, since 2020 have published several booklets on the nature of Sunbury Park (Birds, Butterflies, Trees, Flowers and Fungi) and this project is a natural extension of that work to highlight how valued the park is, both as a local amenity and an oasis of biodiversity in a semi urban environment.
The presence of a new revitalised wildflower exclosure will encourage biodiversity across the entirety of Sunbury Park- itself an ancient and important grassland that has seen human habitation and activity for over 1000 years, and which is reflected in both its ancient and modern grassland biodiversity. The project will also contribute to the ”Surrey Important Grasslands Inventory”, documenting 460 rare and biodiverse sites across the country—covering approximately 39 km² (2.3% of Surrey's land area).
