Establishment of cultivated herbaceous perennials in purpose-sown native wildflower meadows in south-west Scotland

This paper presents the result of a 3 year field experiment into the establishment of cultivated herbaceous perennials by planting into a purpose sown, urban, native wildflower meadow in Ayr, south-west Scotland. The aim of the experiment was to see whether it was possible to produce an attractive, low maintenance meadow of native and exotic species for use in urban parks. Twenty species and cultivars of herbaceous perennials (forbs) were selected for the study on the basis of possessing attractive flowers and naturally being associated with damp to wet grasslands. They were planted as small container grown plants into 200 mm diameter gaps in the wildflower meadow in September 1995, as individual plants, pairs of the same species and pairs of different species. All planted forbs were harvested immediately prior to the annual summer hay cut, dried and the dry weight of their above ground biomass determined. Forbs planted as individuals were significantly larger in the second and third year of the study, than those planted with neighbours of the same or different species. Many species of planted forbs demonstrated high mortality by the third year of the experiment as a result of competition with the surrounding sown meadow. This competition also resulted in very low rates of dry weight increase in most planted species. Of the 20 species planted, only Geranium×magnificum, G.×oxonianum, Iris sibirica and Lychnis chalcedonica are considered to be ‘increaser’ species under meadow cultivation with a summer hay cut. Most species declined under the conditions investigated in this experiment. Factors believed to be responsible for the failure of forb establishment, and the implications of this for future works are discussed.