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 helping to carry out DEFRA-funded field trials to evaluate and test integrated weed management strategies for controlling invasive grassland weed species such as Creeping Thistle (Cirsium arvense). In situations where herbicide weed control is restricted (e.g. on organic farms or land under agri-environment management) it is important to test the effectiveness of traditional cultural weed control methods such as cutting and stock grazing to reduce high levels of weed infestation. Results from these long-term studies showed that the implementation of appropriate grazing regimes alone could help reduce high thistle infestations, thus providing an ecologically-friendly and cost-effective solution.
 Thistle infested pasture |
 Effective weed control |