On Tuesday 15th October Herefordshire Meadows Chair of Trustees, James Hawkins and Co-Directors Caroline Hanks and Rory Johnson travelled down to the Houses of Parliament to attend Plantlife’s Grassland Westminster Reception sponsored by Wera Hobhouse MP. The event, attended by farmers, NGOs, corporate partners MPs and Peers called on the UK Government and DEFRA to unlock the value of grasslands… Read more →
Great news that the GRH6 “action” is now available in the Expanded SFI offer, and we are able to offer you some helpful information. You can also read more on the Natural England (NE) website about GRH6 and how to register your interest. Some key points and top tips from HM: The action’s AIM is for there to be species rich grassland with a… Read more →
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On Wednesday 7th August, we hosted our fifth and final summer evening meadow walk of the season at the magnificent Mowley Valley in North West Herefordshire. The valley is currently managed as a large scale habitat mosaic consisting of species rich grasslands, semi-natural ancient woodland, scrapes and rough edges and all dissected by the River Arrow. The focus of the… Read more →
On Thursday 25th July, we hosted our fourth meadow walk of the season at the stunning Broadmoor Common Local Nature Reserve. Broadmoor Common was declared a Local Nature Reserve (LNR) – one of only 6 in the county – by Hereford and Worcester County Council in 1987. The reserve was designated primarily for its areas of flower-rich unimproved grassland which… Read more →
On National Meadows Day on 6th July, the rain passed SW Herefordshire just in time for us to have a great view from Urishay across the Golden Valley on our visit to Tom and Catherine Oliver at Urishay Court. Thanks to them for hosting us and to neighbouring farmer, David Morgan, who joined us to talk about the challenges of… Read more →
On Monday 24th June, the weather finally delivered for our first evening meadow walk of the year. The event was kindly hosted by Hilary Hillier at Bythan, Avenbury, who has been restoring grassland for 20 years using a variety of methods including green hay, local provenance seed and plug planting with great success. One of the fields visited during the… Read more →
On June 13th, Meadows Adviser Rory Johnson led a farm walk with the Herefordshire branch of the IAgSA at Upper Pengethley Farm near Peterstow. The walk included a visit to some hay meadows which were enhanced in 2023 as part of Herefordshire Meadow’s Botanica project using seed from Joan’s Hill Meadow, the county coronation meadow. After going through the restoration… Read more →
On Monday 10th June meadow owners from across Herefordshire attended a Plant Identification training day at Croft Castle. The day was led by Vice County Botanical Recorder and Herefordshire Meadows Trustee Stuart Hedley, who introduced the group to the Rapid Plant Monitoring Method, a simple technique for monitoring changes in grassland over time. The session was aimed at equipping meadow… Read more →
On Thursday 6th June Meadows Adviser, Rory Johnson gave a talk to a packed house in the old village hall for the annual Cradley WI open meeting. After giving an overview of who Herefordshire Meadows are and some of the things the charity gets up to, Rory then went on to explore how meadows have been an integral part of… Read more →
