Think of the Cotswolds countryside and what springs to mind? Green, sheep-dotted fields? Honey-stone cottages? Neatly tended gardens with flower beds in full summer bloom? What about lawns and verges that sprawl unmown as they sprout daisies, clover and that most reviled of gardeners’ weeds, the shock-haired common dandelion?

One Cotswolds village has challenged British gardeners to cast aside their famous prediction for neatly trimmed lawns and rigorous weeding of unwanted plants. Tysoe’s journey began in spring 2019, when a handful of its residents refrained from mowing their lawns during May, the month when emerging bumblebees and hoverflies are feeding on the rich nectar of wild plant species such as dandelion, bluebells and cowslips. The campaign, dubbed #NoMowMay, was first proposed by British wild plant conservation charity Plantlife in 2019, as a way to protect endangered species as well as the fast-disappearing natives that feed on wildflower nectar and whose populations are threatened by factors including global warming.

In Tysoe, locals took to it with gusto: sowing wild flower seeds, refraining from mowing and installing Brian May, a scarecrow who inadvertently resembled the legendary guitarist with British rock group Queen, to deter birds from pecking at wildflower seeds and shoots.

“The effort has been growing every year since,” Rosemary Collier, one of the project’s local coordinators and an entomologist at Warwick University. “The idea to make space for nature came from members of the church and we first rewilded parts of the churchyard. Then the parish council came on board and we re-wilded some of the parish’s verges. We also harvested seeds from local native wildflowers and sowed these alongside yellow rattle, which is semi-parasitic and suppresses grass, allowing other wildflowers to grow.”

Tysoe villagers are part of a broader citizen-led British green volunteering trend that’s been dubbed ‘ungardening’, which urges Britons to let 30 percent of their gardens and public spaces grow wild for the benefit of native wildlife. The trend can present a challenge to British tastes, admits Shirley Cherry, who coordinates a conservation campaign to turn Tysoe into a year-round wildlife-friendly village that’s sprung from the village’s rewilding efforts, Tysoe Wildlife.

“You won’t win everybody over because some people like primness in their gardens,” Cherry says. “Nature likes things messier: curving lines rather than straight lines, plants left to grow.”

On a mild day this May, Tysoe’s verges bloom with daisies, buttercups and wild violets as bees fly in busy arabesques and passersby quizzically stop to read the signs erected to explain the thinking behind the villages’ unkempt verges. Collier, who studies insect counts in her work at Warwick University, says that quantitative analysis of the impact on Tysoe’s insect life is tricky but that she had noticed more bees in the village this year, as well as a greater range of insect species.

Any good news is much needed. A 2019 study found that a third of British wild bees and their pollinating relatives, the hoverflies, are in decline, with habitat loss and climate change thought to be the principal causes of the insects’ demise.

Collier has enjoyed the flowers that have sprung up on her village’s unmown verges, including nectar-rich wildflowers such as oxeye daisy, field scabious and knapweed. She’s also pleased that dandelions, unsung kings of the pollinating world, are being rehabilitated, in Tysoe and beyond.

“People get annoyed with dandelions because they’re so good at dispersing their seeds but they’re amazing pollinators because they’re composite flowers with lots of little flowers in their head,” she says. Collier hopes such efforts will lead to a renewed appreciation of the environmental benefits of wildflower such as dandelions and nettles and the important role they play in supporting insects and animals higher up the food chain.

Author: Sally Howard, The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Unsplash, Rosemary Collier and Sylvia Davies

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Plant a tree and save the planet; or so we’re told. Well you might be surprised to discover that not all tree planting is good tree planting. A tree planted in the wrong location can block watercourses or provide a wider vantage for predators of endangered species; it can even, in the case of tree-planting in ancient moor and peatlands, release carbon deposits that have safely been stored in the soil for decades, or longer.

“It’s about planting the right trees in the right location to maximise environmental benefits,” says Alice Crosby, Project Officer of a smart tree-planting project in Nidderdale in the Yorkshire Dales, funded by British conservation charity the Woodland Trust. “An example of good planting would be around existing woodlands to create a new space for wildlife to expand their habitats. Poor planting would be in important habitats such as our heathland and moorlands, which already support rare species and contribute significantly to the UK’s targets for carbon sequestration.” In Nidderdale, bad planting has historically opened species of wading birds, such as the endangered curlew, to predation.

With around eight percent tree cover, Nidderdale is typical of British regions in having undergone historical waves of deforestation followed, after the 20th century’s two World Wars, by a programme of replanting of commercial woods such as conifers; with British fuel security, rather than conservation, in view. More recently, tree planting in the region was on landowners’ instigation, with local authorities only stepping in when these projects were on a large scale.

The idea with Nidderdale’s digital Woodland Opportunity Map says Nidderdale Biodiversity Officer Kelly Harmar, is to “flip that process and make it much less passive”. With 70 different factors accounted for, and data drawn from everywhere from grassroots volunteers taking soil samples to Google metrics, the accessible, traffic-light coded online map means Nidderdale can approach landowners, such as private utilities company Yorkshire Water, with the argument for tree-planting in a given spot.

This is where Crosby comes in, her remit being to approach landowners with data on where to plant, as well as advice on how to best withstand the exposed conditions of the Dales. Thanks to hymenoscyphus fraxineus, a chronic fungal disease that’s killing ash trees across the European continent, ash cannot be planted. Beeches, poorly suited to the exposed conditions of the Dales, are overplanted too. Instead Crosby often advises landowners to plant hardy varietals such as the downy birch.

“The idea is to combat climate change but also make the landscape more resilient, meaning that wildlife can thrive and move around more as it’s not impeded by poor tree planting,” Crosby explains.

The beauty of the map’s layered data is that it captures information across the seasons. “If you visit a spot during winter tree-planting season, for example, you wouldn’t know that migratory birds arrive there in summer,” Harmar adds. “A tool like this, that looks at historical data over a number of years, can tease out the sites where ecosystems might be most at risk.”

The team claims that Scandinavian countries such as Finland, with its 60 percent tree cover, much of which is ancient woodland, are their inspiration. Crosby is also documenting the patches of tree cover which are formed of ancient woodland, which has thrived on the same spot for millennia and is host to a range of ancient flora and fauna, including rare fungi, wild garlic and May-blooming bluebell fields. Surprisingly, the locations of these ancient habitats are poorly recorded, even in national archives.

With many of Nidderdale’s mid-war conifer woods approaching their 80-year harvest time, the plan is to replant hardy native species to 12 percent regional forest cover in the next decade, says Harmar. The Woodland Opportunity Map is a big part of this strategy and is being received well. “We only launched the map in October, but the landowners are responding positively and discussing where we might site trees in the next winter planting season,” Crosby says. The project, of course, is only effective if it inspires landowners to plant trees.

Beyond the arguments from data, the team’s loftier hope is to restore Britain’s woodland culture. “British people used to be woodland people and I think we’re rediscovering what we always knew: that forests are great for the planet, but also essential for our mental and physical health,” Crosby says, adding that her favourite forested spot is Hack Fall, where Victorian follies peep between ancient boughs.

Author: The India Story Agency for Sacred Groves
Images Credit: Nidderdale AONB Autumn Colours by David Tolcher

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