Creating a Meadow in the Conwy Valley (Spring into Action with Plantlife talk)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- Plantlife's Botanical Specialist Dr Trevor Dines takes you on his personal journey to create a wildflower meadow in north Wales. This inspirational talk will leave you marvelling at what can be achieved in a short space of time when land is managed sympathetically for wildlife.
This event was delivered as a Zoom webinar as part of Plantlife's "Spring into Action" month of online talks and activities. Discover other ways of getting involved with Plantlife here: www.plantlife....
I've watched this several times and it's now my favourite "how to' guide for meadow creation! Thank you both so much for taking the time to present this!
This makes me so happy! Thank you - I work promoting biodiversity for nutrient dense food in farming. It’s quite difficult getting farmers to understand the benefits of biodiversity on all dynamic ecological systems and farm production. Wonderful data collection and observations. All the best.
Incredible - so joyous, enlightening, informative & deeply important.
Just beautiful, very informative. Thank you
Wonderful! Thank you
Fascinating projects and an infectiously enthusiastic presentation. Thanks!
Good talk! All the graphs were very useful, and the talk was really imformative.
Lovely! ❤️
I have always assumed that it would be impossible to recreate a species-rich meadow in a relatively short period of time, but you have proved otherwise.
Such a valuable presentation. Thank You. Excellent!
Thank you so much, very informative and you can sense the passion, I am failing with my meadow, having cast many seeds but I obviously need the yellow rattle to help me although I am pleased with the plants that inhabit our land, my meadow is in France, I wish you were my neighbour. Thanks again, great work everyone
this is really helpful as we are just about to get a Higher Tier Grant for wild flower meadows but making and preparing the ground for sowing seeds has not been clear as to exactly how to do it, so this video was great and how to graze it was informative
Quite inspiring. I have never seen so much devil's bit scabious and butterfly orchid!
I love meadows!
Thank you for such clear and practical advice. I dream of creating a wildflower meadow in Scotland where I plan to move later this year. Extremely helpful step by step guide on converted a grass field. All I need now is the land.....
Sorry if it's not exactly accurate but this might be handy?
00:00 - 15:00 General introduction and background histories of Plantlife and Dr. Trevor Dines
16:00 How they created their meadow
16:10 Initial cut of the grass
16:40 Flail mowing of the sward, exposing the soil surface
18:35 Harrowing the ground after flail mowing (50-60% bare earth)
20:45 Seeding
24:43 The grass initially vigorously regrows!
27:00 Taking a hay cut/introducing livestock/stock rotation/seasonal activities
29:40 Hard grazing is important!
30:20 Yellow Rattle is important! (an annual parasite sp on grasses)
31:30 BEFORE photo (2015) Grass dominated pasture.
32:00 (2016) Still grass dominated (takes time for Yellow Rattle and introduced seeds to establish)
32:22 (2017) Yellow Rattle explosion! Grasses suppressed.
33:05 (2018) Beginning to be "proper" meadow.
33:45 (2019) Greater diversity/less grasses
34:20 (2020) A mature(ish) meadow
34:35 (2020) One of worst droughts on record.
35:04 MONITORING
38:35 Grasses have rebounded after drought affected Yellow Rattle but still high diversity.
40:06 Indexes of Diversity
44:24 Pollinators
46:35 ... Various graphs and benefits of meadows
It is July 2022, and I just foraged a bouquet of lovely wildflowers and herbs that I have never seen anywhere else before, in a forest. I think I found mugwort, too! So beautiful, and so fragrant. Very loamy soil, and I don't think I can just propogste these without knowing what they are, but I might try. ;)
Thank you, very inspirational.
On the Aberystwyth University webpage, they aknowledge him as "the visionary George Stapledon " www.aber.ac.uk/en/ibers/about-us/history/90_years/ There is no mention of the environmental damage caused by "Sir George Stapledon". But he is a Sir.....
What's the difference between a Ryetec flail mower and any other flail mower?
Thanks Trevor for your amazing talk. I started a similar journey two years ago and am in the rattle dominated phase, but lots of other species are gaining a place as well. I had a question about Ragwort. There are a couple of places during the talk where you mention it in a positive way as a source of nectar late in the season. However, everyone else seems to wage war on it due to its toxicity in the hay. Do you let it reach the point of seeding and pull just before the hay cut, leave it, wage war once it flowers or.......,? Your thoughts would be appreciated as it is so clearly favoured by insects and of course particularly the Cinnabar moth, yet I find myself ripping it out!!
no wild carrott? my wild garden patch was covered in it last year
Where can we buy the seed?
When will we get an update ?
Does having ragwort in the mix cause a problem with the cut & baled meadow hay?
This also occurred to me as ragwort can be poisonous
Only if you feed it to livestock. In sfficient quntity it will kill.
@@clocaenogredsquirrelstrust4099 that depends on the species of livestock!
The problem with botanists is that they invariably think that as long as you look after the plants then you will automatically look after other wildlife. These people need to get some invertebrate biologists involved in their organisation to advise on how not to create massive sinks in the environment.
No thistles? Ours is rapidly getting covered!
Thistles tend to thrive in high nutrient environments. Has your meadow ever had any nutrient enrichment?
@@williamfullofwood7421 We only bought it just over a year ago. Prior to that it was heavily grazed for years down to almost nothing by many horses, a few highland cows & a herd of alpaca!
@@kirstylogan605 you should find it finds its own balance over time. At Knepp, they had a huge influx of painted lady butterflies and they hit the thistles hard. Be patient and see what happens.
Fascinating video. It's a shame that Nell and the others will be killed and eaten one day.