MEADOW WONDER LAND

 Donna’s restored meadow

GREEN DESERTS CAN BE BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE WITH KNOW-HOW AND TLC. BY DONNA RAINEY

If I had to choose my favourite habitat to visit, it would have to be native wildflower meadows. I fell in love with our native wildflowers when I was a child. The 10-minute walk to the bus stop every morning and evening, along roadside verges and hedge banks, taught me to recognise the most common of our wildflowers. I sometimes gathered samples to bring to the school nature table, another important way to learn about nature and become familiar with the names of the plants and trees around us. Dandelions, buttercups, yarrow, wild strawberry, vetches, lady’s bedstraw, dog rose, honeysuckle, foxglove, cleavers and cow parsley were just some of the common plants on those verges. But even back then, growing up in the 70s, wildflower meadows were not part of the farming landscape. The land then was predominantly green fields, largely devoid of flowers. All the fields on our farm had names and my favourite was called McNeill’s field, presumably named after a previous owner. Unlike the other uniformly green fields, this one had an area of “rough grazing” and wet areas which included a

 Donna’s field in July 2021, after five years of management

small fen and some gnarly old willows and alders. Here I learned about flowers that preferred wet conditions, and they were exotic to my young mind. Marsh cinquefoil and bogbean were two of my favourites. Lady’s smock, valerian, meadowsweet and greater bird’s foot trefoil were others. This type of land was completely undervalued. It wasn’t productive, it didn’t serve any purpose as far as farming was concerned. It was seen as somewhere that needed “improvement” and drainage.

Twenty years ago my dad was approached by a forestry company offering grants to plant up unproductive bits of farmland with sitka spruce and a few broad-leaved trees. They planted every single wet area, every corner of any interest, and right into the fen. The remainder of McNeill’s field only escaped planting as it was good ground for growing potatoes, barley and ryegrass! It was utterly depressing to see dense planting of sitka spruce in such a precious area, it still enrages me! The forestry company sold this idea as an environmentally friendly way to turn nonproductive areas into profitable land. More depressing still, is the fact that this afforestation of quality grassland habitats continues unabated to this day. I see so many meadows in Donegal now converted to plantations. The value of these meadows to wildlife and for carbon storage is far superior to this type of planting. Six years ago my dad sadly passed away and true to his word he left McNeill’s field to me. At that point in time the land had been let to local farmers who managed it

intensively for crops. The previous year it had been planted in winter barley and under-sown with Italian ryegrass. So I inherited a field of silage. There was only one thing to be done: have it cut and baled for silage in late summer and then sow yellow rattle seed on the closely shaved surface. I borrowed a small lawn seed sower from my mum and walked randomly across the two hectares sowing the yellow rattle as evenly as possible to achieve maximum coverage. Yellow rattle, aka the meadow maker, is a native annual wildflower which parasitizes the grasses around it, stealing their nutrients and weakening them, creating space so wildflowers in the seed bank have an opportunity to grow.

Apart from the dense grass cover, the other issue was excessive nutrient levels in the soil. For years the land had received very generous applications of slurry and fertiliser. Only removal of hay/ silage each year can reduce the nutrient load, so each year that passes the soil conditions are more suitable for wildflowers and less favourable for vigorous grasses. Another issue was that the ground had been sprayed with many applications of herbicide over the years, and I wasn’t sure how this had affected the soil fauna. Ploughing also had affected soil structure. I had quite low expectations for what might grow naturally, but I wanted to find out, so initially I didn’t sow any seed other than yellow rattle. The following spring I was really pleased to find tiny seedlings of yellow rattle coming up. Germination was slow and quite erratic, but over the summer a reasonable cover was achieved. There weren’t many species of wildflowers, some clovers and dandelions… but it was early days! Ryegrass was still dominant. I repeated the process of cutting silage/hay each August and adding more rattle seed. Year three brought much excitement, about 30 leaf rosettes of common spotted orchids appeared. There were more wildflowers too: buttercups, dandelions, clovers, along with native ox-eye daisy and common knapweed. The grasses had also changed, Yorkshire fog was now dominant.

A few Hereford cattle were introduced in winter to graze off the fresh grass growth and provide some light trampling to open up spaces for seeds to germinate in. Each year the meadow has improved with numbers and species of wildflowers. It is very reassuring to see how nature can bounce back given the right conditions. Year six, last summer, exceeded all expectations. There were literally thousands of common spotted orchids, some northern marsh orchids, bird’s foot trefoil, red clover, knapweed and cat’s ear. The orchids are significant in so many ways. Their seeds are so tiny that they can’t germinate and grow unless there are specific fungi in the soil which help nourish the seedling. Healthy soil with a good fungal component is so important for plant growth and carbon storage. Orchid growth suggests the soil and meadow are recovering from the intensive nature of previous farm practices. I also noted that there was a healthy earthworm population. Back in 2016 I had planted a hedgerow around the meadow perimeter and noted how few earthworms were present at that time.

Each spring I am full of anticipation for how the meadow will look. Each year brings new surprises, it is fascinating to see the distribution and number of flowers, the various grasses and sedges.

During the lockdowns of the past two years, time spent in this meadow brought me intense joy. Watching and listening to the hum of bees, hoverflies, butterflies, moths, birds, small mammals too, it was difficult to remember how this meadow had looked only six years earlier. I cannot put into words just how good it feels to know that my efforts have brought about such a transformation in a few short years.

The project with this meadow really whet my appetite for meadow creation/ restoration. Close to where I now live there is an old, established meadow, predominantly of devil’s bit scabious. I have been visiting it for the past 20 years. It changed ownership and was no longer being regularly grazed. Occasionally it was mob grazed by ponies and donkeys

 The field in May 2019, during the third year of management

 Narrow-bordered bee hawkmoth by Donna Rainey

and they overgrazed it, leaving it in summertime resembling a bowling green. Then it wasn’t grazed for a year or two and again overgrazed by ponies. This random and sporadic grazing left me wondering what the long-term prospects would be for this meadow. When the grazing was timed right, this meadow was a sea of blue and alive with pollinators, but there were few flowers or pollinators when it was too intense. In recent years it had become rank and rushy and was losing diversity. I decided to find out who owned it.

An elderly neighbour was able to tell me who the landowner was and confirmed it was an outlying piece of land which was included in a farm sale. The owner had not used the land and he felt they might be interested in selling it. Fast forward six months and the deal was done: I am now the happy owner of over 1.2 hectares of meadow and some bog woodland, an absolutely beautiful piece of land.

Because there had been no grazing for several years the meadow was thatched

Yellow rattle by Zoë Devlin

with old dead vegetation and rushes. My partner and I fenced the area and brought in the trusty Herefords to graze it. There’s only so much old growth that grazing can sort out, so after the cattle were removed, two friends and I spent several mornings scything and raking off the grass. This is a very different meadow from McNeill’s. It is long established, has never been ploughed nor sprayed. The meadow is south facing. Exposed sunny banks are home to several species of mining bees including ashy mining bees. There is a big population of the leaf beetle Galeruca tanaceti which feed on the devil’s bit scabious. Last autumn I watched one of the gravid female beetles climb a flower stalk and there she laid her tiny orange eggs and coated them in a protective secretion. I checked on them the following day and they had changed in appearance and looked like a mini pinecone. I had seen these clumps previously and had no idea what they were, and now I knew! Devil’s bit scabious is the food plant of two rare species: marsh fritillary butterfly and the narrow-bordered bee hawkmoth. In the past three years I have discovered both of these species in adult and juvenile form in meadows close to where I live. The excitement and joy I experienced finding these two stunning creatures, sometimes in good numbers, is something I will never forget. I had only ever seen them in Donegal and Fermanagh before and didn’t expect to see them so close to home. Unfortunately, marsh fritillary do not fly far from their birthplace, so I don’t expect to see any in my new meadow. The nearest population I know is a few miles away. I’m not sure if the narrow-bordered bee hawkmoth travels further, but I remain hopeful!