Even with a spring that went from very cold and wet to unusually hot and dry in the blink of an eye, it amazes me how the meadow transforms from resting in March (below) to exuberant growth in just a couple of months. By April Fool’s Day, there are plenty of primroses and dandelions to…
Second year’s progress
The pictures above show the cemetery meadow at the end of May 2022. Two weeks later, by mid-June, there is a greater variety of flowers with ox-eye daisies, sorrel, lesser stitchwort, betony, and white clover among the buttercups. By August, the rich purples of scabious and knapweed are showing… …and providing food and shelter for…
Second May
I thought it would be interesting to compare this year’s meadow with last year’s. Here is how it looked in early April last year, on the left, and in late March this year on the right. Similar comparisons from mid to late May, with last year on the left: It is impossible to say yet…
Thicket
The shrubbery in the Moorhaven burial ground contained a few hydrangeas, two dogwoods and a lot of snowberry. We wanted to make it more attractive to wildlife with edible berries and a variety of shrubs that would flower at different times. Andy Love raised money for the project in January by chipping Christmas trees and…
The first year
Work on our Moorhaven meadow began a year ago with Liz, Tanya, Andy and myself walking around Moorhaven looking for suitable sites. We solicited views on a wilder Moorhaven through social media, including this post: https://devonhedgerow.wordpress.com/2021/02/07/moorhaven-meadows/ [For anyone reading from outside the village, Moorhaven is a private village created from a Victorian hospital and managed…
Species lists
On the first weekend of June, we surveyed flowers in the Ugborough burial ground and Moorhaven cemetery. There was a considerably wider range at Moorhaven, as the hedges, oak tree, wall and gravel path provide a series of micro-habitats appealing to different species. At Ugborough on 6th June 2021: bindweed sp. hedge bedstraw bracken hogweed…
Ugborough burial ground
While the Moorhaven meadows group has been working on the Moorhaven cemetery meadow, Greener Ugborough Parish https://www.ugborough.com/g-up has received permission from Ugborough Parish Council to manage the Ugborough burial ground for wildlife. It is rough (or rank) grassland, dominated by cocksfoot grass, with the potential to build up a deep thatch to encourage voles and…
Open day
Sunday 13th June saw the first Moorhaven Open Meadows event, part of the open meadows series organised by Moor Meadows https://moormeadows.org.uk. In lovely sunshine, we welcomed around 20 visitors to view the new cemetery meadow and Trudi and David’s larger and better established meadows up the hill at Stoneybrook.
Common blue
I was just finishing planting out the rest of the bird’s foot trefoil when I spotted this male common blue butterfly. Lucy caught the browner female (far right) with my phone camera the day before. Bird’s foot trefoil is their main food plant according to my book. The hole below, made in one of the…
Sunshine at last
A week with some sunshine has made a difference. There isn’t a bigger variety of flowers yet but it certainly looks more meadow like. It was nice to see some wildlife enjoying the flowers already, including a 14-spot ladybird and a few garden chafers. A wild shady patch under the trees in the formal garden,…
Mid-May in the Meadow
The weather is frustrating. It feels as though everything is waiting to fulfil its potential as soon as the sun comes out but the rain continues. Before I move onto the Cemetery, I wanted to say that I love the contrast of wild and neat around the trees near the entrance to Moor Park. There…
Making a meadow, day 3
Where were the showers we expected in April? After a month of drought and with heavy rain forecast, a group of us spent May day preparing the cemetery meadow. Most of the time was devoted to digging up docks that would obliterate more welcome wildflowers given a chance. Although April’s cold dry weather had held…
Moorhaven to Green Lane 