Twelve-mile hike saves school playing field
12 January 2010
A school playing field about to disappear under a new building has found a new lease of life as a conservation area after it was dug up and moved to a nearby nature reserve.
Environmental consultants identified the field as 'a significant area of pristine purple-moor grass', including several key plant species such as meadow thistle (Cirsium dissectum) and whorled caraway (Carum verticillatum).
However its owners, Tycroes Primary School in Carmarthenshire, desperately needed to expand and the playing field was its only option. Luckily twelve miles away scientists from the National Botanic Garden of Wales, an RHS Recommended Garden, were studying very similar habitats at the Waun Las National Nature Reserve and offered to give the grassland a new home.
About 300 square metres of the field have now made the journey to a specially-identified area of the nature reserve where the soil profile was as close a match as possible and conditions were suitably marshy for the wet meadow habitat. Contractors moved the field turf by turf, cutting out the grassland in one-metre squares to a depth of about 15-20cm to keep plant roots as intact as possible.
In addition, a small area of turf was transplanted by hand into the school's own conservation area to allow pupils to study the plants themselves. The children will also be able to visit their old playing field once it has become established in its new home.
The Waun Las nature reserve, managed by the National Botanic Garden of Wales, is open to the public.