News from ACORN

ACORN BROUGHT A MEADOW or SO WHAT DO WE DO NOW? Part 2

The late Dr David Bellamy OBE with a Bee Orchid at the Glebe Meadows. Photo Tony Margiocchi In the previous article we wrote about ACORN buying the Glebe Meadows. The trouble with owning land is that you have a responsibility to do something with it. You also have a responsibility to all those that put money into the project. Fortunately ACORN had its own professional advisor in Joel Carré from the Ivel Countryside Project (IVCP). The IVCP was part of an initiative by the government to create better public access to the countryside in areas that were lacking. The Mid Beds area fell into that criterion.

The Glebe Meadow Management Group was set up with two representatives from Arlesey Town Council, The Wildlife Trust and ACORN. Joel acted as chair and mentor at the meetings. The Management Group drew up a plan to develop the meadows in what you see today. The group meet twice a year to formally recognise that the criterion for the grant funding is being met. Although a lot of the work was carried out by volunteers a fencing contractor was brought in to erect new gates and fences. A group doing community service orders (now Community Payback) also carried out work every Sunday for a year. They cut back the ruderal (big weeds) vegetation, installed two sleeper bridges, built an artificial otter holt and even cleared the junk from the river. Yes, they went home very wet, but smiling. Boys and water!

With the ruderal vegetation under control the group managed to get a hay cut done by the late Bill Murchie whose family own the paddocks which form the Mill Pit Meadows. Unfortunately when the new bridge was installed and with the new road layout, he couldn’t get his tractor through the entrance gate so an annual grazing regime had to be brought in. We now had meadows for everyone to enjoy, but then Foot and Mouth struck in 2001 and the meadows had to be shut. The Arlesey WI did manage to plant a Millennium Oak during the closure after disinfecting their boots to do so. See if you can find it in the second paddock (it has a post and rail fence round it).

When grassland is managed on a traditional basis it encourages wild flowers. Efforts must be made in the management to prevent enriching the soil, which stops the grasses taking over. For silage production, nitrates are added to encourage grass growth which is also not good for the rivers. The areas of farmland in most of our county near rivers are classified by DEFRA as nitrate free zone which is what our meadows also come under. For the Natural England Stewardship Grant the meadows get certain marker species that must be encouraged (we will try and explain that in another article). In our fourth year of management we had a plethora of Bee Orchids (Ophrys Apifera) and were honoured by a visit by the late Dr David Bellamy.

Dr Bellamy was on the panel of Plantlife which chose flowers to represent each county. The Bee Orchid is the flower for Bedfordshire so he was double pleased that we put on a display for him. Orchid flowers are shaped to attract certain insects to pollinate them, but although the Bee Orchid does have the faint perfume of a female bee it is one of the few that is self pollinating. You have to hand it to these entomologists that dare to sniff bees, let alone know what sex they are. One of the old country names for the Bee Orchid is Dumble Dor.

Now what has J K Rowling been reading?

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