Wild for Wildlife

A mini rewilding project in Sevenoaks

At Sevenoaks Station we have a mini rewilding project in progress as we leave a bank to grow wild.

A central part of the project is regular surveys to observe what changes occur during the year. Our guess is that leaving it wild will encourage a greater variety of plants which will also support a greater range of insects and birds.

Our survey in early April showed big changes from the first one at the beginning of January. We recorded ladybirds, spiders, bees, hoverflies and a beefly, compared to none of these in January. They will have been hibernating and hiding back then.

Striking this time around was the wildflowers are now flowering; these weren’t big and showy, you had to lean right in and look carefully to see them, but as I peered in I could see that the delicate flowers of common vetch, chickweed, birdeye speedwell and dove’s foot cranebill were all there in blue, white and pink shades. And if you waited a moment you noticed the insects coming to drink their nectar.

Drifts of cow parsley were threatening to stun with a backdrop of white clouds in the coming fortnight, and tiny sycamore seedlings poked their heads through the compacted earth.

The project is an ongoing collaboration between Darent Valley Community Rail Partnership volunteers and Southeastern railway staff. We were so happy to find out that one of the Southeastern staff is an insect expert and he is going to carry out an insect survey and involve his children. He’ll add those findings to the iRecord database logged as “Sevenoaks Station Wild for Wildlife”, where you can already find the plant survey results.

One section of the bank was being taken over by long orchard grass preventing smaller plants from breaking through. So to give them a helping hand we’ve roughly sheared back the grass: now more species can have more light and space to establish and grow.

We’ll do another survey each month for the rest of the year, noticing what appears and reacting thoughtfully.

Birdeye speedwell (Veronica persica)