7 acre Flower Meadow

The meadow is on a sloping site with Thornton Beck at the south boundary. All other boundaries are woodland or mature wooded hedgerows, such the meadow is fully enclosed.

The flower meadow has flourished since we introduced a strict management system in 2006. We took advice from Flora Locale and other local groups to ensure that we put the correct procedures in place. The history of the meadow, and indeed the entire farm, is that non invasive practices have been used since 1950, and almost certainly prior to then. Fertilisers and pesticides were generally introduced from the 1950’s, and we know from the previous owners, who came to the farm in the early 1950’s that none of these have been used on any part of the farm. As a result, the diversity of plants built up over centuries, has been maintained and with sympathetic management can be encouraged to flourish for future years,

The first part of the restoration plan, was to use three Exmoor ponies to graze the meadow. These ponies are used extensively now to remove excess grasses in fields needing restoration, and ours made a good start to our project. As the young grasses began to appear in the early spring we realised that given the choice these ponies understandably preferred green grass to the dead rough grass that they usually ate. So we stopped this grazing and moved to phase two.

After a few weeks grazing by our sheep, we chain harrowed the meadow in the spring of 2006. This loosened masses of dead grasses that over the years had been matted onto the meadow floor. Following the removal of this dead grass, we left the meadow to work its magic, which it did very successfully such that the following year the Wharfedale Naturalist Society Botany Group visited for the day to record the following lists, during June 2007

Our maintenance plan for the future is to carry out the early few weeks of grazing followed by the chain harrow and roller. The meadow is then left empty until we cut the grasses when flowers have set seed, usually in late August or early September. This cut grass is baled and wrapped providing superb forage for the cattle during their winter inside our cattle barns.

We may in future years attempt to introduce other species through the use of seeds harvested from suitable local flower meadows.

Wharfedale Naturalist Society Botany Group June 2007 Listings