Wildflower meadows are all the rage for many reasons: they can be a bright and cheerful spectacle when they are at their flowering peak in May and June, they produce nutritious winter food for livestock, but most importantly from my perspective, they are the natural home of so many wildlife species. The Donkey Sanctuary has some meadows which are a true delight to anyone interested in our nature.
A meadow is an area of land where green crops, mainly grasses, are grown through the summer and then the sward cut, dried and collected for winter food. Sometimes the meadow will be grazed after the cut but this is secondary to the hay crop. Pastures are different, they are areas where the main cropping is done by livestock grazing. They are just as important as meadows but are home to a different range of species, more about them at another time.
The Donkey Sanctuary owns large areas of agricultural land in the area. Much of their holding is managed as pasture but they also manage some fields as traditional meadow. Two of these are easily accessible, 100m from the car park along Dunscombe Lane there is a roadway to the right. It was marked very clearly when I was there this week by an extensive display of Field Rose in the hedge.
Alongside the farm roadway there is a broad strip that is a riot of flowers right now. This is not a traditional hay meadow built up by centuries of management, it is the result of a sowing of seeds from Goren Farm a specialist seed supplier from Stockland. I am told that a happy accident with the flower seeds was the inclusion of a few bee orchids. These germinated and clearly like where they are living because they are multiplying.
There is much debate in botanical circles about this practice of creating instant meadows, often because the seed merchants pack their mixes with species that have a high visual impact on humans but low wildlife value. Goren Farm however is a reputable supplier and they have done an excellent job here, but the display will settle in and evolve, it will be fascinating to see how it changes in years to come.
Much more interesting to me as an amateur naturalist is the triangular field at the of the flower strip. Members of the public might walk past it without a second thought, there are fewer flowers visible and no bee orchids marked out with red flags, but its diversity is developing in the old fashioned way, simple traditional management. It doesn’t have the intense impact but a closer look reveals not only a wide range of native plants, the plant mix will be offering flowers for much longer into the summer. This provides a varied food supply and there will be many more different invertebrates than can be seen in the flower patch. It will also produce much better winter feed for the donkeys.
These two fields are doing different jobs, both of them successfully and I look forward to making several visits through until late summer when they will both be harvested.
Tag: Hay Meadow
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