Controlling the Scrub Invasion

Combeshead is an area of unimproved acidic grassland on the eastern edge of the estate, it is a group of three fields hidden in the bottom of a valley. When I first started at Arlington I was introduced to Combeshead and I shuddered with the thought of the amount of work that the site needed.

Combeshead during the summer months becomes a thicket of bramble, gorse and 6ft tall bracken occasionally broken up by patches of grass. Searching for the cows often takes a significant amount of time due to fact they appear to treat it as a game of hide and seek when they hear you call.

One of our cows who took 10 minutes to find.

This winter we decided to tackle the scrub that was dominating the fields, we gave ourselves the target of cutting and burning all the bramble and gorse within the first two fields. Which I am pleased to say  we have finally managed. In total it took us 15 man days to cut the scrub using brushcutters.

Combeshead if left entirely would turn back into woodland. We use a variety of tools to help maintain the conditions of our grasslands including scrub control, grazing and burning.
Grazing our cattle on Combeshead allows a natural mosaic of habitats to occur enhancing biodiversity. However due to several wet summers we have had to restrict our cattle to Combeshead and therefore this has caused to scrub to increase to a level where we needed to control the scrub.

After brushctting the bramble and gorse we make sure that we rake and burn all of the cut material. This helps to reduce the nutrients returning to the soil and allows areas of ground to become open allowing the grassland species of plants to expand into areas where the gorse and bramble have dominated.

It is a challenging slope to work on especially considering the driving wind and rain we have been having here in North Devon. At the end of each day we would be physically very tired but after a days bruschtting we then we had to face the climb back up the opposite bank to get to our vehicle. This involved climbing up a set of 30 steep steps that were nicked named 'the steps of doom' due to the fact that they were not only extremely steep slippery and extremely muddy and by the time you got to the top loaded with your brushcutter, fuel, first aid kit and rucksack you would feel as if you had been in a marathon.

We were very lucky recently when we received the help of the Woolacombe National Trust Team who helped us burn for the day. We were all motivated by the fresh legs and enjoyed catching up with our colleges from the coast.

Now that we have completed the cutting and burning, we must now make sure we get appropriate grazing next summer to help control the regrowth of the bramble. If we can then this will mean that the cattle and sheep will be able to keep the site in a good condition and hopefully we will not have to return with our brushcutters. However we do expect this first summer that we will need to complete a late summer cut on some of the regrowth to help the livestock keep on top of it. But the key to the success to our plan is a dry summer which unfortunately we cannot control.