"Collecting seeds of plant species of EU importance for grassland habitats and their use in grassland restoration" seminar

On October 1, together with colleagues from the Latvian Fund for Nature, we organised a seminar on collecting seeds of plant species of EU importance for grassland habitats and their use in grassland restoration that was held in Institute for Environmental Solutions, Cesis municipality.

  How to collect seeds of native grassland plants correctly, how to sow them and how to grow seedlings to achieve a good restoration effect?

These and other questions are relevant to many natural grassland managers. The experience of collecting and using seeds was shared by grassland experts Baiba Strazdina and Agnese Priede, participant of the "Flower Meadows" (Ziedu pļavas) programme Raimonds Indāns and researcher Rūta Abaja-Felce from the Institute of Environmental Solutions. Participants also had the opportunity to get an insight into the Environmental Solutions Institute's plan to develop the first wild grassland seed production facility in Latvia.

 Finally, we visited the seed reproduction experimental garden of the Institute of Environmental Solutions, which was created within the Latvian Fund for Nature project "GrassLIFE2" and where for the first year different species of wild grassland plants have been grown for seed reproduction.

Natural grasslands in Latvia can now be considered a vanishing natural value, with only 0.9% or 60 000 ha of the territory preserved. About half of Latvia's grassland habitats are in poor condition, and measures are needed to improve their quality and prevent their loss. Sowing grassland plant species is a widely used method for restoring and conserving grassland habitats and is highly effective: with special sowing, biodiverse vegetation can be established the year after sowing.

The workshop was organised within the framework of the projects "LIFE IP LatViaNature: optimising the management of Natura 2000 protected areas" and "GrassLIFE2: restoring priority grassland habitats of European Union importance and promoting their diverse use". The projects are implemented with financial support from the EU LIFE Programme.