Spring 2023

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 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…

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.

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…

Wild patch

A couple of years ago we marked out a small patch of lawn, strimmed it and sprinkled yellow rattle seeds to keep the grass in check. Here’s how it is getting along. Flowering now: prickly sowthistle, herb robert, scarlet pimpernel, ribwort plantain, yellow rattle, cornsalad, common mouse-ear, red campion, common field speedwell, cleavers, wall speedwell,…

South Brent island

There were loads of common red soldier beetles on hogweed and yarrow at the Island.   This is a broad centurion, a type of soldier fly. They are called soldier flies because of their brightly coloured ‘uniforms’. Broad centurion males have bronze abdomens, like this one. Females have blue-green abdomens. This moth is a beautiful golden Y….

Sunny garden

Among the yellow rattle is a single bulbous buttercup. Even though it is common according to my book, I haven’t knowingly noticed one before. Its defining feature is downward pointing sepals but the leaves also look different from those of creeping buttercup, which tend to be mottled and not softly downy like these. At soil level, the stem…

Clovers and more

Red clover is prolific but there are also some big clumps of the less common zigzag clover growing between Moorhaven and Green Lane, and also along Bittaford Road. Zigzag clover flowers are looser and larger, and always a deep dark pink. They stand away from the leaves, on stalks about a centimetre long. Where the…

Biodiversity

I counted over 90 different species currently flowering between Moorhaven and Green Lane, starting with the weeds in our garden (1-36), progressing to Moorhaven communal gardens where Perforate St John’s Wort (37) and Dark Mullein (38) were growing in a weedy border (they could have been planted there originally), and then via Wrangaton Road to the…

Weeds

In the garden, a tiny specimen of common ramping fumitory, some lady’s smock and yellow rattle that we planted to kick-start a wild flower patch by parasitising the lawn. There are five species of speedwell: germander, wall, thyme-leaved, ivy-leaved, and slender speedwell. Other flowers thrive through lack of weeding rather than by design. Common cow-wheat in woods in South Brent