Ex-situ limestone pavement conservation
Posted on
I have been fortunate enough to spend the last couple of days at Shuttleworth Botanic Garden in the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man is a beautiful place, and it is quite a few years since I have had the pleasure of visiting so it was great to have this opportunity but most of all it was fantastic to visit this developing botanic garden. The garden aims to create botanical landscapes and the early work they have done on these is really impressive. The particularly exciting thing about this project is that they are working to achieve something in the long-term, not something that needs to be realised in the next few years which means that they can utilise more natural colonisation and succession processes.
The reason for my visit is that they are hoping to create a limestone pavement using clints rescued from a quarry in Ireland and brought over the Isle of Man by ferry. The clints have been bedded on a local limestone gravel and arranged to resemble a limestone pavement. They are now interested in what plants should be introduced to create a realistic community. It was exciting to see that even though the clints have been sat in a yard for a number of years they still have many ferns growing on them. I will use the large amounts of data I have collected on limestone pavement flora over the last ten years to support this effort. While there are calcareous habitats on the Isle of Man there aren’t any limestone pavements that occur naturally so we will draw upon what we know from the pavements of Great Britain and Ireland to come up with a planting plan.
I believe this is the first example of ex-situ conservation of a limestone pavement habitat and so it is a really exciting opportunity to not only work towards the conservation of some of the rarer species but also provide an educational resource about limestone pavements.
Related Blogs
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed by our bloggers and those providing comments are personal, and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of Lancaster University. Responsibility for the accuracy of any of the information contained within blog posts belongs to the blogger.
Back to blog listing