Plant and soil ecological consultancy
Examples of our services:
Conservation management of species-rich meadows
Restoring species-rich grasslands
Phoenix Ecology staff were involved in carrying out DEFRA-funded field trials to evaluate and test integrated weed management strategies for controlling invasive grassland weed species such as Creeping Thistle. In situations where herbicide weed control is restricted (e.g. on organic farms or land under agri-environment management) it is important to re-evaluate the effectiveness of traditional cultural weed control methods such as cutting and stock grazing to reduce high levels of weed infestation. The experiments indicated that regular topping of weed populations such as creeping thistle together with appropriate grazing can reduce infestations to a similar degree to that of herbicide applications, thus providing an ecologically-friendly and cost-effective solution.
 Thistle infested pasture |
 Effective weed control |