mowing patterns for heaths

You basically want to have a variety of Heather ages or heights in order to sustain diversity.  Getting to the diversity from a uniform heath can be tricky.  You cannot efficiently do totally random cuts.

And this can be particularly difficult the achieve, using a large mower.

You also want to avoid drawing attention to what you are doing and definitely do not want to encourage people to use the works as shortcuts or off piste tracks.  

You may also want to hide the "brutality" of a close mow, where it looks as if you are getting rid of the Heather.

Our first attempt to do some hidden cuts was on the plateau, where we cut a large v shape in the middle, at carefully calculated angles, so that from the visitors tracks you could not see down either of the straight lines.  As a once off it works reasonably well, but designing subsequent cuts in the following years is difficult and increasingly so.  The process involves some inefficiency at the corners.  there are some risks that the straight cuts may be attractive for use in short cuts.

The next plans for breaking up the age profile will be based on spirals.  These are

- easy to continuously cut

- have little visibility from any angle

- act as a guide for the next years cut

- cannot be used as a shortcut track

- provide uniform corridors to safety, albeit quite long.  Animals don't have to leave the security of a certain height of Heather, to get away.  Though it could be relatively long.

Novel

M

Note that firebreaks are necessarily going to have a simpler straighter construction, for ease of use.