Herefordshire Meadows are very excited to announce that we will be partnering with Buglife on an ambitious, cross county project that seeks to restore 57 hectares of lowland heath and species-rich grassland across Shropshire and North Herefordshire in 2023. This project is added to the cohort of B-Lines projects running up and down the country, from Perthshire in Scotland down… Read more →
Seedling Safari and Winter Management practices for recently restored swards
A very big thank you to Malcolm and Ann Russell who hosted this year’s seedling safari and winter meadow management training day at Westfield Steading on a misty late November day. Malcolm and Ann have restored 1.5ha of species poor grassland as part of the Airwick – WWF-UK project using brush harvested seed from two local donor sites. After an… Read more →
Herefordshire Meadows November Newsletter
This years meadow makers have been busy creating new wildflower meadows throughout September and October as part of the Botanica project. Brush harvested seed was spread across 22 hectares and 2.5 hectares will be enhanced with plug planting Many thanks to all who helped with this work including many volunteer seed strewers. New techniques are emerging all the time with… Read more →
Woolhope Dome Workshop
On September 28th the Woolhope Village Hall was filled for a workshop entitled ‘Developing Natural Capital and Agri-environment schemes in the Woolhope Dome’. The event brought together farmers, smallholders and a whole host of other local stakeholders and organisations all interested in the management of this unique part of the county. Andrew Blake of Wye Valley AONB introduced the evening… Read more →
Celebrating flower rich grassland: integrating wood pasture and wood meadow with farming
We had a full house at the fifth and final event in our 2022 Meadows, Mosaics and Mitigating Climate Change series hosted by Nick and Nicci Lloyd at Fernhall Farm. It was fantastic to have been able to have Dan Carne, UK Director of the Woodmeadow Trust, as our guest speaker for the event. Dan kicked off proceedings by giving… Read more →
Cows and Conservation Video
Our fantastic 2021 Meadow Makers trainee, Maya Broadbank, has put together a little video discussing some of the interesting discoveries she made during her time in Herefordshire about the positive role that cows play in increasing biodiversity in grasslands. You can watch the full video here https://youtu.be/7hevZF9_UKs Read more →
Herefordshire Meadows September Newsletter
Some much needed rain at the end of August allowed us to begin our Botanica project grassland restoration works. With the help of some fantastic volunteers, we spread just over 50kg of wonderful, local provenance, brush-harvested seed across a 1.5ha site near to Wellington. We have two events upcoming this month. We have a waiting list for the event on… Read more →
Herefordshire Meadows August Newsletter
AUGUST 2022 UPDATE During June and July the Herefordshire Meadows team have collectively surveyed 30 species rich grassland sites, the majority of which will be put forward by their owners for selection as new Local Wildlife Sites as part of the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust’s Wilder Herefordshire Project. Our seed harvesting team have also been very busy over the past few… Read more →
National Meadows Day – Saturday 2nd July
On Saturday 2nd July we celebrated National Meadows Day, a day dedicated to species rich grasslands. Miriam Griffiths and Anthony Furness hosted a farm walk at Olchon Court where we discussed the management approach they have followed that has created such wonderful, diverse meadows in a mosaic with trees, woodland, pond, riverbank and orchard. This included talking about some of… Read more →
Grass ID Training day at Parsonage Farm
On Monday 4th July we hosted a Grass ID training day at Parsonage Farm. The focus was on grasses of Herefordshire farmland. The lead trainer for the day, Stuart Hedley, kicked off proceedings by explaining the basic structure of grasses and the key terminology used to describe these features. The group then visited two sites, stopping en route to highlight… Read more →