The team worked on an area of fore-dune that has a very invasive non-native plant growing on it called purple dew plant, which is also known as the ‘jelly bean’ plant due to the appearance of its succulent leaves. This plant, originally from South Africa, was brought into the Island to grow in people’s gardens, but has since escaped into the wild where it grows well along the coastline, to the detriment of our local flora. Large areas of the fore-dunes are now smothered by this plant where it forms dense carpets, and the plant can be seen to be spreading further inland.
Both events started with a brief introductory talk given by Harriet from Nurture Ecology, which covered some information about the plant, the scale of the problem and the task. The team then spent the morning hand-pulling the plant from the fore-dunes, and managed to push back the new spreading plants that are threatening the wider sand dune ecosystem. A group of 46 year 4 students from First Tower School came along to help on the second event, and the many extra hands made a massive impact. The BNP Paribas team worked with the children and helped them to pull the correct plants, and then carted the heavy load of pulled plants to a central area for collection by Nurture Ecology, who disposed of the purple dew plant at La Collette commercial green waste facility.
The hard work paid off and by the end of the two events, large areas had been weeded and cleared, and a total of 800kg of purple dew plant was cleared from the dunes. Our sincere thanks go to the BNP Paribas team and First Tower School for volunteering for this environmental task, which has genuinely helped protect the sand dunes from the spread of this highly invasive and destructive plant.