Bog Myrtle & Peat

Almost seven months after fencing off the heather laboratory, the heather is starting to show incredible improvements. When the fence was built, it was designed to sit at an angle across a stand of overgrazed ling to show what a difference livestock were making to the moor.

Only in the last fortnight has any real difference become noticeable, and as the tiny white heather buds emerged towards the end of July, I had fingers crossed that a real change was in the offing. Sure enough, the white buds turned pink, then purple, swamping the undergrowth with colour and life. Outside the fence on the same stand of heather, no purple is visible at all.

Sheep nibble away the heather flowers, bruising the plant and forcing it to waste energy on repairing itself while simultaneously preventing it from breeding. It never occurred to me for a second that the heather laboratory would make such an unbelievable difference to the undergrowth in such a short time, and if the wires can stay up for another three or four years, the progress is going to become more and more noticeable.