Abstract Ecological restoration can halt the ongoing loss of habitats, species, and ecological functions. However, to realize its potential, restoration ecology must develop tools for predicting restoration success based on suitable ecosystem attributes, as their properties affect prediction outcomes. Ideally, restoration should integrate time to recovery (TR) into outcome assessments. For management‐dependent ecosystems, the impact of post‐restoration management should also be included in the assessment. We conducted an 18‐year roadside restoration experiment to explore the TR of seminatural grassland vegetation, using local grasslands as the reference ecosystem. We assessed how TR was affected by two alternative restoration techniques: “Ecological” (adding target species propagules via species‐rich seed mixtures or hay) and “Standard” (hydroseeding of species‐poor, commercial grass mixtures). We moreover assessed the effect of a subsequent shift in post‐restoration management after 8 years, from “Traditional” (regular cutting and subsequent biomass removal) to “Limited” (cutting with no biomass removal). Additionally, we compared the suitability of two ecosystem attributes, species composition and species richness, for predicting TR. Our TR predictions confirmed the advantage of Ecological over Standard restoration techniques and highlighted the importance of Traditional post‐restoration management in restoring seminatural grassland vegetation. Conversely, Limited post‐restoration management halted the development of seminatural grassland vegetation, regardless of the initial restoration method. This highlights the importance of monitoring how restoration and management interact to influence restoration success in seminatural grasslands. Species composition was a more suitable metric than species richness for evaluating restoration success. It reflects not only the number but also the identity of species, enabling differentiation between target and nontarget species. Moreover, the species composition mirrors the site's environmental conditions, regarded as fundamental for restoration success. Our study also shows that TR calculations based on species composition data provide more realistic predictions of restoration success than those based on species richness. We conclude that time‐to‐recovery predictions are among the tools needed for restoration ecology to mature and evolve from a descriptive to a hypothesis‐testing science.
Auestad et al. (Sun,) studied this question.