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Our wildlife meadow... When
I was a child (over forty years ago!) my grandfather showed me a wild
bee hive on his allotment and the good they were doing for his veg and
flowers. Ever since that moment it has been a personal ambition to keep
honey bees. Once the dust of moving into the new property at Pauls Lane
had settled, Pat helped me bring this dream into reality.
 The
nursery had previously been divided into the glass house area, with a
separate half acre field left fallow, and used as a general builders
tip. The rubble has been recycled as hardcore, and the assorted rubbish
sorted and re-used where possible. This was the basis of the wildlife
meadow.
This picture shows most of the meadow. It is nearly cleared of all the rubbish and ready for a skim with old soil then an overseeding of clover. |
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My first task was to provide any future bees with a selection of nectar
and pollen producing plants close to home, so with the help of Hedges
Direct we purchased 100's of mixed natural hedge species, blackthorn,
hawthorne, dog rose, hazel, elder, field maple, crab apple, bramble and
many more. With a generous donation of dung from our neighbouring
horses the Decorfolia team and friends spent hours digging trenches and
planting. As Pat had always wanted an orchard we also planted a
selection of apple and pear trees giving a good variety of blossom
throughout the spring. These measures were an instant hit with our
local deer population, so we had already created a place for local
fauna! Even our two office cats loved the improvements as our
photographs illustrate. |
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With the help of a motor mower and strimmer
the uneven tufty grasses were eventually levelled out and I made an
oversowing of clover, phacelia and mustard as nectar rich bee and
insect fast food.
With all of this preparation and following a training course at
Hartpbury College in Gloucestershire I felt confident that I would
give the bees a good home, so when the bee
nucleus arrived in mid-June there was plenty of local nectar and
pollen, along with the unlimited supplies of "always in flower" gorse
bushes just 500 metres away on the open forest and of course the late
summer heather...The bees soon settled and my knowledge, with the help of the New Forest Bee Keepers Association has grown with the colony, how wonderful to spend a Sunday afternoon out in the field watching the bees fly in and out of the hive and sharing this precious space with butterflies and birds. The next project was to add water, both for the bees and local animals, but also to add to the varied selection of creatures sharing this site with Decorfolia. As the pond is to be a wild-life pond (not a gold fish pond) Pat insisted that we have good beach areas for swimming mammals, together with islands for the bees to drink from. |
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| By the end of summer 2008 the bees had produced enough honey for us to all have a taste of things to come, they were settled down for the long winter months and the field and pond ready for additional planting the next spring... | ||
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I hope the pictures show how far this project has come in the last ten
months. It has been a labour of love at weekends and evenings and now
it is coming to a finale I hope that the Decorfolia staff and the
rest of the wild life around here will enjoy it...
Mark Below are a few links to places that helped me along the way. New Forest Beekeepers Association Cotswold seeds Hartpury college Hedges Direct |
| © Décorfolia Ltd 2009 |
