Herefordshire Meadows July Newsletter

After a slow start everything is now looking very lush and the meadow flowers are blooming. June was the month to begin doing plant and bumblebee surveys and we hosted a number of in person trainings to assist people with this. All of the frenetic meadow activity culminated in two very successful events hosted in Titley and on the Bromyard Downs for National Meadows day on 3rd July. There is still a bit of time before all the hay cutting begins to get out there and do your surveying and just to enjoy all your magnificent meadows. We will be busy in July harvesting seed from species rich sites across the county to be used as part of our Plantlife meadow maker project.

We are also excited to announce that  are starting a new, three year meadow restoration project. Working in collaboration with the Wye & Usk Foundation, Botanica and the World Wildlife Fund together we will restore a further 60ha of species rich grassland within the River Wye catchment.

Read on for further information on all this and more including another new funding opportunity, interesting training events and workshops and the Shropshire Hay Festival.

 

Upcoming events:

Saturday 24th July – Shropshire Hay Meadow Festival

The Shropshire Hay Meadow Festival is back on Saturday 24th July. It is a great, fun filled, family day out celebrating all the wonders of wildflower meadows. You can get your tickets here. Our Meadows Adviser, Rory Johnson, will be giving a short presentation on ‘Small Meadow Creation’ at 16:15 in the Talks tent.

 

Training Days at at FarmED

Cotswold Seeds have recently opened a new FarmED, food and education centre, on their 107 acre mixed farm in Oxfordshire. The aim is to provide a learning space to ‘inspire, educate and connect people to build sustainable farming and food systems that nourish people and regenerate the planet’.  You can find out about the wide range of training programmes being run here.

 

Catch up:

What’s all the buzz about – are all pollinator habitats equal?  with Dr Paul Cross

On 8th June, Dr Paul Cross, senior lecturer at the School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University, gave a fascinating talk on some of the key challenges facing pollinators and the importance of species rich pastures and meadows being restored on a landscape scale to reverse these downward trends. The full webinar is available to watch again here.

 

Plant and Bumblebee ID training days

In June, we held two plant ID training sessions and one bumblebee ID training session out in the field. We kicked things off on 10th June with a visit to the Bromyard Downs where trainees familiarised themselves with our rapid monitoring field sheet by completing at least three quadrat surveys spread out in a ‘W’ shape across the survey area. We then held another, similar training, this time in the West of the County at Urishay on 24th June.

 

On 17th June Andrew Nixon, of Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, led a bumblebee ID training event. Andrew began by explaining the fascinating life cycles of bumblebees and familiarising attendees with the 7 most common UK bumblebees, all of which can be found here in Herefordshire. He then went on to demonstrate the best way to catch a bee using a net, how to then transfer it into a pot for identification and finally how to log observations on a species recording sheet.

 

National Meadows Day 3rd July

Saturday July 3rd was National Meadows Day, a day dedicated to our wonderful wildflower meadows. To mark the occasion Plantlife launched it’s new Meadows Hub which has loads of fantastic information on how to make and look after a meadow.

Here in Herefordshire we celebrated by hosting two events in Titley and near Bromyard respectively. At the morning event in Titley, participants were treated to a two hour farm walk around the Shawl Farm and Titley Mill. Along the way differing management and restoration approaches were discussed along with their varying merits. Complimentary habitat creation works were also considered including; hedges, rough edges, tree planting in the right place and hedge and field trees. There were lots of interesting questions put forward, demonstrating that nothing beats meeting in person in a meadow.

At the afternoon event near Bromyard, hosted by Herefordshire Meadows Chair James Hawkins, the group visited three fields; one that is to be restored as part of this year’s Meadow Makers project, one that was restored in 2019 and another which is being allowed to naturally enhance via gentle management. Along the way short presentations were made on the role of meadows in tackling the climate crisis, the importance of healthy soils and the impact of meadows on human wellbeing.

A big thank you to all our generous hosts; Jeremy and Nicky Mitchell and Christopher Goode in Titley and James and Victoria Hawkins at Warren Farm.

 

New opportunities:

Farming in Protected Landscapes scheme:

The new, Defra-funded Farming in Protected Landscapes (FIPL) programme has just opened for applications. The fund is open to all farmers and land managers within an AONB or National Park in England. The aim of the fund is to improve local climate, nature and human outcomes. Applications for funding in the first year of the programme close on 31 January 2022. More information can be found here.

 

Get Surveying:

There is still time to complete your plant and bumblebee ID surveys before the hay cut. Irrespective of whether you already have a well-established meadow, have recently carried out restoration works or hope to carry out restoration works in the near future, it is good practice to survey on an annual basis. This will enable you to see changes over time and gather vital data that will help guide management decisions going forward. You can find lots of useful information and helpful resources on the ‘surveying an monitoring’ page of our website including; how to carry out a rapid monitoring assessment, and a meadow plant ID sheet.

 

Meadow Makers Project:

Seed, Glorious Seed

Thanks to the generosity of species rich meadow owners across the county we have, again, been able to find local donors for the majority of our Meadow Maker sites. In the coming month we will be harvesting seed from no less than 13 different meadows. The seed is then sieved after harvesting and dried in preparation for broadcasting in late summer/ early autumn.

Best wishes,

Caroline, Sue, Catherine, Rory and Maya