Stonehenge success with chafer grub nematodes.

English Heritage is winning its battle against invading forces at Stonehenge, Wiltshire thanks to native nematodes. Hosting 800,000 human visitors a year is one thing, but when the famous landmark found chafer grubs plaguing its grass pathways, the world-renowned visitor attraction needed help! It came in the form of Nemasys Chafer Grub Killer, produced by Becker Underwood, the world's largest producer of nematodes, which was applied to 5000 sq m of grass to the south-east of the stones.

Chafer grubs, one of the top ten garden pests according to the RHS, had caused problems for years by eating the grass roots. This was exacerbated by jackdaws pulling up the grass to seek out the grubs, resulting in unsightly bald patches. Add to that the constant flow of visitors and English Heritage had to keep moving visitor paths away from the damage that encircled the famous stones. There was yet another problem too - when the chafer grubs hatched, the resulting swarm of beetles would fly up at the visitors who found it extremely off putting to say the least.

Due to the large number of visitors including children and with local wildlife and sheep grazing in the neighbouring fields, there was no way that English Heritage wanted to resort to chemicals so they had to come up with a natural environmentally friendly solution - Nemasys Chafer Grub Killer. Within a week of the first application, back in September 2006, the secondary damage from wildlife reduced considerably. A review of the result in April 2007 has led English Heritage to order more Nemasys Chafer Grub Killer - enough to treat an area twice the size of the original application.

Says English Heritage's Chris Bally, Landscape manager for Stonehenge and the south-west, "Nemasys Chafer Grub Killer has cured the treated areas. We found it extremely effective and chafer grubs have not caused us a problem at all this year on the treated areas. Now we are targeting other infected areas and hopefully we will not have a chafer grub problem at all in a couple of years."