Written by Beth Brown, PARTRIDGE placement student
The Advanced PARTRIDGE Wildflower Mix is a wild bird seed mix (AB9), and undoubtedly one of the best habitat options to support farmland wildlife. It has been developed by scientists at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) throughout the North Sea Region PARTRIDGE Project.
Thanks to our work at GWCT, this mix (also referred to as wildlife plot) has been incorporated in the new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMs) through the government-funded Sustainable Farming Incentives (SFI), enabling farmers to make space for nature alongside modern farming. It can also be planted in the new SFI Scheme under the IPM2 option, or as Pollen & nectar mix AB1 in HLS.
Spring-sown Advanced Wildflower PARTRIDGE Mix (Oakbank), in 2nd year after establishment, Rotherfield Demonstration Site, Southern England.
Table 1: Species composition of the Advanced PARTRIDGE Wildflower Mix sold by Oakbank
Dr Francis Buner, GWCT Senior conservation scientists, co-designed the seed mix with Oakbank Game and Conservation whilst leading the PARTRIDGE Project at the Rotherfield Demonstration site in East Hampshire. During the PARTRIDGE Project, over the past 7 years, the mix has been trialled and tested at the project’s 10 demonstration sites across Europe.
This allowed to collect in-depth experience on how best to establish and manage this habitat type, including trialling different seed compositions, the establishment on different soil types, different cutting management, time of sowing and more. Overall, this allowed the project to gather extensive knowledge, experience, and evidence of what a good wildflower mix should look like and more specifically, how the mix delivers for partridges and other farmland wildlife.
Autumn-sown Advanced PARTRIDGE Mix at the German PARTRIDGE 5 years old, Diemarden Demonstration site, Germany.
You may think, what makes this mix better than a standard wild bird and pollinator mix? Well, the current standard mixes typically contain less that 10 species of plants, with most of them being non-native species and require re-establishment every other year, which leaves a big gap with no cover, food, or shelter in spring and into early summer during the year of resowing.
Whilst the Advanced PARTRIDGE Mix has a minimum of 20 species (see below), mostly native perennials, which ensures there is plenty of food and cover for insects and birds all year round. Not only does this mix provide year-round but it can also last for up to ten years, if managed correctly, reducing time and costs involved with re-establishment. This makes this mix a winner for partridges, wildlife, and the farmers wallet. Follow this StoryMap link to find out more about the Advanced PARTRIDGE Wildflower Mix.
Autumn-sown Advanced PARTRIDGE mix (Oakbank) in second year after establishment, Rotherfield demonstration site, Southern England.
Green Thumbs: The Growing Process
Over the past few months Dr Buner’s placement student has been using her green thumbs to grow 20 bags of the Advanced PARTRIDGE Wildflower Mix to be ready in time for the GWCT stand at the English Game Fair. The seed mix was kindly provided by Oakbank, available to purchase here. The display will attempt to take this partridge-tailored habitat to the fair, hoping to give potential buyers of the mix a better idea of what the seed mix could/should look like in its first year of establishment.
The mix was planted in two batches in May this year. Below you can see a series of photos illustrating growth development of PARTRIDGE mix between April and July.
With a lot of tender love, care and water the mixes have grown well, considering the small pots they were planted in which become depleted of nutrients quickly relative to the nutrient-rich soils on farmland the mixes are designed for.
Follow the links below for more information about the Advanced PARTRIDGE Wildflower Mix:
Oakbank
Partridge mix on the Rotherfield Estate (Video)
Similar mixes are also available from Kings Seeds and Brights.