The innovative approach to verges along the side of the Weymouth Relief Road is already having remarkable benefits, according to the county’s leading ecologist.

The last of the 125,000 trees, shrubs and marginal plants to be planted along the Weymouth Relief Road, which went in this spring, are growing well thanks to the wettest April on record and plenty of rain ever since.

Butterflies, including the country’s smallest resident butterfly, are already moving in, demonstrating the wildlife benefits of this approach to verges.

The three-year planting programme has replanted 10 times the area of trees and shrubs that were lost during construction.

Six hectares of bare chalk have been transformed into wildflower areas using local seeds so they tie in with the surrounding landscape.

More trees and shrubs have also been planted at the Mount Pleasant park and ride site, which has been redesigned to help reduce future maintenance costs. Work has now started on a five-year maintenance programme to ensure the recently planted trees and shrubs get established.

County ecologist Dr Phil Sterling said: “Our in-house grounds services workforce and contractors Knighton Countryside Manage-ment have worked extremely hard to complete the planting before the Olympics. In the past, we always put 30cm of topsoil on all verges when we reinstated them after an improvement scheme.

“While the ground greens up quickly with that depth of soil, the grass needs regular cutting and we create ourselves a maintenance liability forever.

“In some places on the Weymouth Relief Road, we have used much less topsoil than this or none at all.

“The early results are remarkable.

“On the main cuttings through the Ridgeway we have reduced our maintenance costs over a wide area to virtually nil.

“We have over 20 species of wildflower thriving and four species of butterfly are now breeding there, including the very local Small Blue, which feeds on the yellow Kidney Vetch.

“So this type of reinstatement has two benefits: it is good for wildlife and looks spectacular when the flowers are out and, once established, the verges require much less maintenance in the long term.

“The downside is that in the short term the verges may look ‘unfinished’ or scruffy – but after a year or two the benefits are clear.

“We will use the lessons learnt from the landscape methods we have tried on the Weymouth Relief Road to promote more sustainable management practices across our grounds and premises.

“In these times of financial constraints, we need to consider how we can work with nature to cut our maintenance costs.”