The Countryside Services’ Parks team of one Yorkshire Local Authority have pioneered the use of CUTAWAY as a novel management tool to help successfully establish and manage wildflower areas.

Techniques included both encouraging existing wild flowers and planting new wildflower plugs into managed and unmanaged grassland. The team reported suppressing the grass has undoubtedly helped both existing and new planted wildflowers to thrive and become dominant over the grass.

It also made management of the areas easier, with CUTAWAY treatment eliminating any need for mowing right through to the autumn, when the annual cut down took place to release seed back into the sward and with the cuttings removed to reduce fertility.

“We have trialled and developed bespoke programmes for the use of CUTAWAY to manage roadside verges and a range of other situations that can reduce the amount of grass cutting by more than 50%. Our experience is that with two carefully timed applications of CUTAWAY, motorway verges can be managed with just cut, compared to three cuts under a conventional mowing regime.

It gives greater flexibility to maintain grass more effectively and new options to release time and budget for far more worthwhile and beneficial purposes.

Our programmes have proven to be successful and are now being adopted on a wide scale by authorities and councils.”

Paul Cawood
Languard Business
Development Manager

A major trunk road in the north of England demonstrated the persistent reduction in grass growth from CUTAWAY applications. Visual assessments on the 4m wide treated swath showed over 80% height reduction from a single July CUTAWAY application three weeks after an initial mowing.

More than eight weeks after treatment the CUTAWAY application was still showing more than 50% height reduction.