Wednesday 30 July 2008

Website of the week


Plantlife is the only charity working solely to protect Britain’s wild flowers and plants, fungi and lichens, and the habitats in which they are found.
Established in 1989 after a meeting of conservationists and botanists, led by Professor David Bellamy, called for a new organisation, an 'RSPB for plants', to champion wild plant conservation. Today, Plantlife is the leading charity working to protect wild plants and their habitats both regionally in the UK (eg, Plantlife Wales) and internationally. The wild flowers and plants that give the UK its unique character, from our woodland and meadows to our uplands and coastline, are under tremendous pressure from intensive farming, habitat destruction, invasive plants from overseas, over-grazing, climate change and pollution. A report in 2007 confirmed that a staggering one in five of Britain’s wild plants is threatened with extinction. Meadows are also areas of concern, which is why our own MeadowLife project is so important to us.

Sunday's work day was hot





... very hot but we managed to cut back some of the overhanging branches on the meadow path and cut back more vegetation elsewhere to help increase more biodiversity. As we get into late summer and autumn we will see more work days trying improve the biodiversity of the meadow - mostly this will be cutting back on the scrub that has crept in over the past 2 years. In the main we will need to cut back on a lot of the willow so we can help regenerate our meadow and hopefully next year see more species there than we have now.

Thursday 24 July 2008

Meadow life







The meadow is looking wonderful at the moment - full of yellow (eg, birds-foot trefoil), purple, and pink hues, patches of lovely wild flowers bursting out. Just take a walk in the early evening and see for yourself the huge variety of butterflies that are around at the moment in all their glory. I also saw a lovely array of burnet moths, beautiful black with red spots. A young fox was also out and about in the early evening when it was still light, no doubt feasting on the many bugs, grubs and small mammals that have found their home among the pile of rocks at the top of the meadow (once considered and eyesore, this area has turned into its own little reserve).