Greenwich Park’s Flourishing Grassland Habitats: Bringing Back the Butterflies

Regular visitors to Greenwich Park may have noticed changes to the landscape, finding themselves strolling through longer grasses in new areas rather than the mown parkland that has characterised a lot of the park for decades.

Through Greenwich Park Revealed - an £8 million, four-year project supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund - we’re working to improve the park’s natural environment by creating new and diverse habitats for wildlife.

Greenwich Park is a site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation. It’s a real haven for wildlife within the bustle of London. But in recent years, traditional park management has meant the park has not reached its full ecological potential.

Greenwich Park’s acid grassland

Greenwich Park was originally heathland – dry, sparse grassland growing on acidic, sandy soil. This ‘acid grassland’ is now a rare and nationally-important habitat and is home to wildlife which loves sun and bare, patchy ground – mining bees, digger wasps, butterflies, insect-eating birds, and plants such fine-leaved grasses, lichens and gorse.

At the moment, acid grassland is mostly confined to the park's southern half – the largest area is Croom’s Hill. In summer, the crimson flowers of sheep’s sorrel attract butterflies like the small copper, and the ground is peppered with tiny holes - the nursery burrows of mining bees.

Changes to the park’s mowing regime

Since the 1960's, regular mowing to create lush thick lawns has restricted the growth of more natural grasslands across the park limiting the potential for wildlife to thrive.

So, we’ve switched to mowing the grass just once a year rather than every fortnight.

We’ve worked with experts to carry out ecological surveys of Greenwich Park, and this information has identified the areas of the mown parkland where habitat restoration will be most effective for wildlife.

Based on these findings, we’ve mapped out new areas which will have the most potential as new meadowland with longer grasses. We’re being careful however to leave the most popular areas which are currently used for recreation as shorter grass so they can be enjoyed by visitors to play on.

This relaxed mowing regime allows grasses and wildflowers to flourish, providing an excellent grassland habitat for fungi, invertebrates, including pollinators, and small mammals such as mice and voles, which in turn will provide food for the iconic tawny owl that breeds in the park. It will provide better feeding and nesting habitats for birds such as the house sparrow – a species that has been declining dramatically in recent decades.