We had a full house at Withington Village Hall for our 2025 Forum entitled Meadows, trees and more.
The morning began with a welcome from newly appointed Chair of Trustees, Julian Partridge who gave a summary of some of Herefordshire Meadow’s planned activities for 2025. This includes; revisiting 30 of our historic restoration sites to assess progress and offer follow up support and advice, developing a new volunteer network, expanding the team with the addition of two new advisers, creating a further 20-30ha of new species rich grasslands across the county and carrying out assessments of 22 floodplain sites along the River Wye and Lugg as part of the Wyescapes Landscape Recovery project.
Director and Meadows Adviser, Rory Johnson then ran through some of the highlights of 2024. This has included; creating 57ha of new species rich grassland and enhancing a further 17ha across the county, running botanical ID training sessions and a series of summer meadow events, speaking at the National Grasslands Conference, travelling down to London to lobby MPs and Lords and hosting Natural England’s grassland team and engaging with more Herefordshire residents including primary school pupils from Ashperton and Fownhope Primary schools.
Meadows Adviser, Carys Solman gave an overview of the 2024 seed harvesting season. The changeable weather again made things challenging and condensed the seed harvesting into a very short window at the end of July. In total 6 sites were harvested, a total of 14.2ha and 523kg of wet weight seed was collected. This seed was used on 13 receptor sites, creating 27.4ha of new species rich grassland.
Two of our 2024 restoration site owners then shared their thoughts and experiences of creating a new species rich meadow. The two case study sites were Theresa Jones and Trevor Joseph at Cadwell Farm and Dreda Darling at Caradoc Court. The sites were quite different in that Dreda’s site is a floodplain meadow next right next to the River Wye in South Herefordshire, whereas Theresa and Trevor’s site is a lowland meadow located in the far North West of the county. A highlight was hearing about how a local running club were brought in to help with the hand broadcasting of the seed at Cadwell Farm. Many hands made light work and all were rewarded with home made hotdogs afterwards.
After a short coffee break we were treated to a fantastic keynote speech by Dan Carne, Director of Woodmeadow Makers. Dan was recently awarded a Churchill Fellowship to carry out a study tour of European Woodmeadows, delving into questions about management systems, threats, opportunities and the added value of having trees within meadows. Dan visited Estonia, Romania, Germany and Sweden between May and July 2024 and it was fascinating to hear how Woodmeadow systems compared and contrasted across these different countries. What was also striking was how there is often a multiplier effect in terms of grass production which comes from having some trees within meadows, particularly in periods of extreme heat and drought. The trees themselves also provide a wide range of secondary products including fruit, charcoal, animal fodder and habitat more, making wood meadows both rich in biodiversity and high in productivity.
To conclude the proceedings Caroline Hanks (Director and Meadows Adviser, Herefordshire Meadows), Lucinda Lewis (Herefordshire Meadows Trustee and Farm Adviser at the Wye & Usk Foundation) and Hayley Murray (Natural England Adviser) explored some of the agri-environment options available now, or coming soon which are targeted at these mosaic habitats, supporting very low density tree and scrub within species rich grasslands. There is still a lot we don’t yet know, the SFI scheme is now temporarily paused and the new Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier is open on an invite only basis but there is certainly cause for optimism.
Finally, all the attendees had the chance to mingle over lunch and meet representatives from partner organisations working towards the same goals.
The slides from all the presentations can be found here.