To celebrate National Meadows Day 2023 Fiona Fyshe gave us a tour of the beautiful meadows at Sollers Hope on Friday 30th June. In 2015 this 3.6ha site at Hurstans received brush harvested seed from Joans Hill Coronation Meadow, a Plantlife nature reserve. The hay meadow now boast a healthy population of Green Winged Orchids as well as many other interesting species, and was recently designated a Local Wildlife Site.
The event was fully booked and well attended (despite the threat of rain) and owner Fiona Fyshe talked us through the restoration process. Meadow monitoring methods were discussed, plant ID skills were practiced, and we finished off with a scything demonstration from David Kuegler. Joan’s Hill site manager Jonathan Stone from Plantlife attended to see how the meadows are getting on 8-years post-restoration.
Many thanks to Fiona Fyshe for a lovely day, and also to the late Chips Fyshe who together with Fiona created these beautiful meadows – new species in the Coronation Meadows include bee orchid ( photo D Lovelace)
and in the orchard where the grassland is managed as a kind of WOODMEADOW for hay between the tree rows the former pasture is naturally becoming more flower rich without any seeding including bird’s foot trefoil and lady’s bedstraw
