River Nene Catchment Partnership
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Wildflower meadow Farm Walk, Wednesday 23rd June 2010. Species rich grassland created under HLS meeting CSF targets.
Press Release
A farm walk, for the Nene Catchment Partnership, took place on Wednesday evening at Dovecote Farm at Upper Heyford. Nearly thirty people came along on a perfect evening to see the restored meadow in its full glory. The site would traditionally have been a wet meadow but was converted in the 1970s to arable production. Over the last few years the site has been flooded on numerous occasions and in 2007 the final arable crop was harvested with great difficulty.
In April 2008 the site was sown with a range of native species such as Meadow foxtail, Sweet vernal grass, Common knapweed, Meadowsweet, Yellow rattle and Great burnet. A new hedge divided the site along an old boundary, with the lower part of the meadow being encouraged to develop into MG4 grassland (Meadow foxtail Great burnet) while the upper part of the meadow develops into a drier wildflower pasture. This project was funded under Natural England's Higher Level Stewardship Scheme.
This type of wet, species rich grassland, which is a Northants Biodiversity Action Plan habitat, has dramatically reduced in the last 100 years with over 95% been lost nationally. In Northamptonshire a little over 60 hectares remain and much of that has suffered some form agricultural improvement.
The meadows are now at their best with a range of native wildflowers and grasses in flower. The site is being managed in a traditional way with half being cut for hay (lower half) and then grazed by cattle, while the upper half is now being grazed by native Hereford cattle. The area is crossed by the Nene Way, a footpath from Upper Heyford, and a new 400m walk has been created alongside the meadow and the River Nene to join a byway from Upper Heyford and the road to Nether Heyford.
The Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust are assisting to monitor the development of the meadows as this creation project is important both locally (for future meadow restoration/creation on the River Nene and River Ise [Revital-ISE project]) and nationally as part of the creation/restoration and management of Floodplain Meadows Partnership (Open University). The site represents about 1% of remaining type of this habitat left in the country. The monitoring work took place on Tuesday 22nd June when member of the Wildlife Trust, a student from Moulton College and Dr Robin Field and Neil Monaghan from RNRP surveyed the site. The landowners (Mr & Mrs Banner) are conducting a butterfly transect on the site and recorded 15 species last year including numerous of the grassland specialist the Small copper.
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