The stand just before the gates opened
Another exciting week as the intern - The inaugural Wildlife Fair at the Beth Chatto Gardens, a garden of great renown just outside Elmstead Market, provided ample opportunity to get out and about. We and other local wildlife and conservation organisations, set up stands and gave talks and demonstrations, sharing our work and enthusiasm with an excellent crowd.
Mark Nowers, the warden for Wolves Wood and Stour Estuary, ran a fantastic and well-attended moth event, opening a light trap set the day before. We found 25 species, some of which were rather charismatic and all of which were enthusiastically identified by Mark, quick-fire-fashion. I tried my best to keep up with recording a legible list!
Later in the day he helped over 30 children make bird-themed badges. It was great to see so many young people wandering around wearing these, and no-doubt some of them will have learned a new bird name too.
One of many treble-bar moths. This one posing on the light-support bar.
Shirley Boyle, the Project Officer for the Flatford Wildlife garden, gave a bustling talk on wildlife gardening, using the whole site as an aid to teaching.
I manned the very busy stand almost throughout, and had many interesting and fruitful discussions about local reserves, Flatford, and the Homes For Wildlife activity. It was really good to see so many people interested in our work, and in nature more generally.
As an aside – the Beth Chatto Gardens are perhaps best known for their Gravel Gardens – areas of extremely well drained substrate, mulched with gravel and planted intelligently to produce something which is simultaneously visually spectacular and intellectually stimulating, but which isn’t ever watered once the plants are established. They call it a ‘horticultural experiment’ but to me it is quite inspirational, as it demonstrates that intelligent planting - what Beth Chatto famously called ‘the right plant for the right place’ - can have a real impact beyond the immediate environment. Every drop of mains water is processed and moved using energy, and so our taps contribute to climate change. Moreover, water has to come from somewhere, and over time we have removed a great deal from valuable wetland habitats, in many cases damaging them greatly. With growing demand for our finite water resources, reducing consumption is becoming necessity.
I’d be wrong to write an entire post without even mentioning what we’re doing at the Flatford Wildlife garden. This week saw the completion of the new three-bay compost bin, mostly from bits of chestnut not quite good enough for the boardwalk. This will be a great resource for the garden, ensuring that nutrients are recycled back into the beds and reducing any future need to bring in compost from outside. I’ll be reporting on our compost right here in future posts!