More and more things have started bursting into life over the past month, the early spring flowers are appearing and there is a buzz in the air. Things have been busy behind the scenes too at Herefordshire Meadows. Our team has grown again as we have been joined by Maya Broadbank, a Plantlife Meadow Maker trainee. Maya has already been out and about around the county honing her ID skills. Read on to learn about an exciting programme of talks and the first opportunity to join our 2021 ID training sessions . Also see the section on machinery demos and loans, discover how you can take part in Plantlife’s cowslip survey, join the Herefordshire Meadows scything team and much more.
Upcoming events:
Wednesday 5th May 6-7pm – ‘A Smallholders Experience of Machinery for Flower Rich Meadows’ with Tim Daniels
Tim Daniels will give us a presentation about his 5.5-acre flower rich smallholding in Newton St. Margarets. This talk is for any smallholder who’s wondering about the cost-benefits of purchasing their own machinery as opposed to setting up a machinery share with neighbours or outsourcing to local contractors instead.
Email: bookings@herefordshireruralhub.co.uk
You will be sent the Zoom link shortly before the webinar for further details please visit our website.
Wednesday 26th May 3-5pm – ‘Introduction to Plant Identification – rapid monitoring method’ with Stuart Hedley
Stuart Hedley will lead a zoom session on meadow plant identification aimed at beginners and improvers. He will focus on introducing our rapid monitoring method as a quick way to assess changes in plant diversity due to meadow management and restoration. This is a must for those in the 2021 Meadow Makers project and anyone else making a meadow with any source of funding, in a stewardship scheme or under your own steam.
Email: bookings@herefordshireruralhub.co.uk
You will be sent the Zoom link shortly before the webinar for further details please visit our website
Tuesday 8th June 6-7pm – ‘What’s the buzz about – are all pollinator habitats equal? with Dr Paul Cross
In this talk, Dr Paul Cross (Bangor University) will introduce the science being conducted to better understand some of the challenges facing pollinators in the wider landscape. He will highlight key indicator species to look out for in a healthy meadow and also which restored and created habitats are of most benefit to our native pollinators.
Email: bookings@herefordshireruralhub.co.uk
You will be sent the Zoom link shortly before the webinar for further details please visit our website.
Calling all scythers for 24th July 11 – 6 pm at The Shropshire Hills Hay Meadow Festival, A fun filled family day at the Discovery centre, Craven Arms, celebrating Wildflower Meadows and their Wealth of Wildlife.
We are hoping to send a team of scythers from Herefordshire. If you’re interested in taking part please get in touch with Rory Johnson or Sue Holland
Listen/ Watch/ Read again:
‘Better together: how facilitation groups are transforming nature recovery’
On 8th April the White Peak Farmers group hosted the first talk of their new Networks for Nature: Facilitating Collaborative Farming webinar series. Among the speakers were Caroline Hanks and James Hawkins of Herefordshire Meadows who gave an insight into how farmers and landowners across the county are working together to bring about tangible environmental improvements. You can watch the full webinar again here.
‘Principles of Creating Flower Rich Meadows’ with Caroline Hanks, Sue Holland and Rory Johnson
A talk covering the basics of restoring land to a wildflower meadow including how to prepare the land for seeding, where to source wildflower seeds and when to introduce grazing stock. The full webinar is available to watch again here.
Other news:
Machinery pictured below kindly being donated to Herefordshire Meadows by Peter and Hilary Hillier to benefit of group members – ideally in a cluster to get most use.
McCormick International baler B46 6FT topper
Both are in assumed working order. Could be any flexible arrangement including no fee loan as for the seed harvester. If you’re interested please contact us by 7 May.
James Hawkins 07968 331130 james@warrenfarms.co.uk or Caroline Hanks 07779 080940 caroline.hanks@farming4wildlife.co.uk
Calling contractors and land managers to two Machinery Demonstrations for kit that we’d like to have available in Herefordshire for habitat management. Spaces are limited to contractors, conservation organisations and landowners with serious interest to invest / share this kit for local land management projects.
Thursday 6th May am TBC – near Madley McConnell ROBO-Flail
Wednesday 12th May – Fownhope Rootwave-Pro electric weeder
Please email Caroline Hanks if you’re interested and she will put you in touch with the organisers. Sorry that we can’t accommodate large numbers at either event. But you can see videos of both on Youtube.
Plantlife Cowslip Survey
Not only are cowslips one of our best-known spring flowers, they can also reveal secrets about the health of the grassy places where they grow. It is for this reason that Plantlife have joined a pan-European study to collect data on this iconic, early Spring flower. All you will need to take part is:
- A phone onto which you can download Plantlife’s Cowslip recording app.
- Access to a grassland habitat (pastures or meadows, hillsides or a nature reserve) between April and May when cowslips are in flower.
- A spare 30-60 minutes of your time.
If you are interested in taking part find out much more here.
New to meadow restoration?
For anyone new to meadow restoration and curious to learn about how wildflower meadows contribute to biodiversity or how to create your own meadow, we have put together some links to useful introductory resources. You can find them here on our website.
Herefordshire Meadows Communications Survey
Many thanks to all those who took part in our recent communications survey, providing us with very useful feedback to draw upon. We were encouraged to receive plenty of positive feedback on the usefulness of our email updates and interested to discover that there is a significant demand for us to produce more audio and visual materials. With this in mind we plan to record some informative videos and podcasts to add to our website and YouTube channel over the summer.
Meadow Makers Project:
Work underway at Herefordshire Meadow Makers sites
In 2020 Herefordshire Meadows began working with Plantlife on their exciting “Meadow Makers” project. The aim of the national project is to restore more than 370HA of wildflower rich meadows, while engaging thousands of people in events, training to raise awareness of these incredible habitats and providing traineeships for 6 young people starting careers in conservation.
Herefordshire Meadows is supporting 24 Meadow Makers on 33 diverse restoration sites across Herefordshire, ranging from 0.28 to 4.33 hectares. The total area to be restored is 56 ha. Work is well under way. Meadow makers are dealing with any weeds, planning restoration work while we are matching them with potential donor sites to provide wildflower seed and hay. A programme of training days this summer will refresh and train members to conduct baseline surveys of plants and bumblebees before the restoration takes place and ongoing afterwards.
We’d like to thank everyone involved for the progress so far and look forward to seeing the meadows as they become more flower rich over the coming year.
New Meadow Maker Trainee Maya Broadbank joins the team
Plantlife Meadow Maker Trainee, Maya Broadbank joined the team on 19th April and has got stuck into plant ID, event planning, site visits etc. Maya is looking forward to hopefully meeting many of our members soon out in the field or on one of our zoom talks.
Best wishes Herefordshire Meadows Team
Caroline Hanks caroline.hanks@farming4wildlife.co.uk
Rory Johnson rory_johnson9691@hotmail.co.uk
Sue Holland fsgarratt@btinternet.com
Catherine Janson catherine.janson16@gmail.com
Maya Broadbank Maya.Broadbank@plantlife.org.uk