This dataset contains nitrate and ammonium concentrations, nitrification and mineralisation rates, particle size and microbial biomass data from soils taken from an experiment based at Winklebury Hill, UK. The experiment used seeds and plug plants to create different plant communities on the bare chalk on Winklebury Hill and tested the resulting carbon and nutrient cycling rates and compared these to the characteristics of different plant functional groups. The experiment ran from 2013 to 2016 and this dataset contains data from 2013 only. This experiment was part of the Wessex BESS project, a six-year (2011-2017) project aimed at understanding how biodiversity underpins the ecosystem functions and services that landscapes provide.