There have been two areas in Horsforth where the HCA Nature group have worked with the Climate Energy and Green Spaces dept. of Leeds City Council to develop suburban meadow-like areas to increase biodiversity: these are Cragg Hill Recreation ground and Drury Field. Last year, additional wild flowers were planted and yellow rattle seed sown to both areas, as community events. Our recent blog post tells you more about how to develop and manage a reduced mowing and meadow area.
Following the exceptionally wet weather this year, unfortunately the grasses thrived and the wild flowers suffered, so there was limited success.
The late cut, after the flowering plants had set seed, was delayed and the cuttings were allowed to drop instead of being collected. We were told by the council that this was due to an issue with the equipment that would normally have enabled this. Ideally these areas require the cuttings to be removed to reduce the fertility of the soil, promoting the growth of wild flowers and restricting the more vigorous grasses and strong weeds such as nettles.
With the weather set fair for the week, we decided to act quickly and organise a working party to try and clear the cuttings from Drury Field. To make this activity more engaging, we employed a ‘land art’ idea, raking the cuttings into linear piles shaped into a stylised ‘Horsforth Horse’ with waves representing the ‘Ford’. The simplistic lines, reminiscent of the white horse of Uffington, were meant to make the job easier! To record the creation we had to find someone that had a drone operated camera. Oscar stepped into the breach with his small drone that linked to his phone. As land art is usually ephemeral, the piles of cuttings were then distributed under the hedges, to mulch down and ‘feed’ the hedge.
With limited time to publicise the event, numbers engaged in the activity were small but we still managed a horse and couple of waves, clearing perhaps up to half of the cuttings. We received many comments of support from local dog walkers and others, for what we were doing.
This whole exercise has inspired us to perhaps do something similar next year as a celebratory ‘hooray’ marking the end of the current funding and perhaps the beginning of a new phase for Horsforth Climate Action.
You can see some of the images taken by the drone below
