Down to earth

26 The West Dorset Magazine, March 25, 2022 Down to earth Living life with more sustainability

Environmental charity campaigners are calling for West Dorset residents to support their cause. Sustainable Dorset, based in Dorchester, works throughout the county to increase people’s awareness of and involvement with sustainable living projects. These projects include sustainable transport schemes that promote cycling over driving in suburban areas and sustainable food projects, including a community garden in Poundbury. Sustainable Dorset also works to support the founding of Transition Town schemes, where local schemes aim to combat climate change and the use of Peak Oil. A charity spokesman said: “Sustainable Dorset is the central hub of all sustainable and resilient activity across the county. “We aim to raise awareness and so increase interest and involvement in sustainability. “We connect people and communities, supporting individual well-being, community enterprises and businesses in order to nurture resilience. “We bring together the many and diverse sustainable activities across the region, and showcase to the world at large what we are already achieving. “We provide sensible advice on how you can live more sustainably, and more importantly, we can connect you with projects and like-minded people across the county who are already on that journey and can provide practical ways to be involved.” For more information about joining Sustainable Dorset go to sustainabledorset.org. To raise funds for Sustainable Dorset, the Green Martinstown project is hosting a film night, followed by talks by naturalists and supper, at Martinstown village hall from 7pm on Saturday, March 26.

n For more information about the event or to book tickets call 07874 910877.

Plenty of treasure to be found hidden in rubbish

BEACHCOMBING with JO BELASCO BA Hons History of Architecture and Design

Today, I am on the hunt for the skeletons of Pink Sea Fans and driftwood. We are on the Chesil Beach at Abbotsbury. Like most, this beach has a very different character in the summer than the winter. Unlike most, it is not overtaken by buckets and spades but fishing rods and tents. Of course, the Chesil is famous for its pebbles being curated by the methodical tide and wild hands of the waves from the largest at Portland to the smallest at West Bay. Some beachcombers collect particular pebbles here, some are drawn to naturally striped ones or ones with animal shapes. As Stocks and Lewin write in The Book of Pebbles ‘a favourite pebble can become a talisman, a minor household god’. Scanning the strandlines, I always pick up some rubbish during beachcombing and it seems the more litter you pick up the more treasure you are rewarded with. Having said that, it’s not really possible at this beach to have one bag for rubbish and one for treasure as the two are often entwined. Until I moved to West Dorset I had no idea that we had coral around our seas. Or that coral is classed as an animal and not a plant as it does not make its own food. Fishermen’s line is one of the things to rip coral from the seabed. The coral I find is called Pink Sea Fan or Warty Gorgonians; they are dead, sadly, but still beautiful. Here I have used the coral in the peacock collage as a new skeleton, this time for a bird. I find driftwood fascinating. I love the odd shapes tide and time have wrought and the more blanched the better! Driftwood crafts have blossomed in recent years, and I often see driftwood Christmas trees for sale in season. On Facebook there is a great group called Driftwood Around the World which feeds my addiction when the weather is cautionary. Due to the stones and shingle makeup of the beach, it is hard walking. Dogs are welcome all year up to the Tank Teeth boundary which is locally known as the Dragon’s Teeth. Talking of teeth, please watch what your dog eats during your visit as occasionally there can be fishing hooks caught up in the debris.

ANIMAL MAGIC: Coral used in a peacock collage

Making a bee-line for the stinking hellebores

Sally Cooke lives in Tolpuddle with her husband, two grown up sons and her spotty rescue dog. Sally will be writing seasonal pieces for The West Dorset Magazine and you can see her work, Sparrow in a Puddle at Instagram.com/ sparrows.puddle.photos

The increasing warmth of the sun over the past few weeks has encouraged the bumblebees out of hibernation and into my garden looking for food. The sound of them buzzing between the flowers looking for nectar and pollen is one of my favourite signs of spring. My March garden has plenty for them, they love the crocuses, the freely spreading grape hyacinths, the polka-dot lungworts and the unfortunately named stinking hellebores. They’re not the only pollinators enjoying the spring flowers though as the sunshine also brings out other bees, some early peacock and brimstone butterflies and that furry bee-mimic with its long straight proboscis, the beefly. The joy of working in the garden again after the winter fills me with optimism and, as I think ahead to the summer I’m excited by the promise offered at the garden centres by packets of seeds and bedding plants. But, although all the labels offer us colourful and attractive plants for our gardens, flowers are not all equally attractive to bumblebees and other pollinators. Monty Don of Gardeners’ World caused huge controversy a few years ago when he described begonias as ‘repulsively ugly’, whether you agree with him or not, a flowerbed full of them provides no nourishment for the bees. Pansies, petunias and busy lizzies also provide little or no pollen or nectar. There are of course many wonderful summer flowers that will make our gardens look spectacular but will also fill them with pollinators. A little bit of careful thought when choosing can make all the difference, look out for labels that say ‘perfect for pollinators’ and look and see what the bees are enjoying in your friends’ gardens! The Bumblebee Conservation Trust has masses of information on what to grow and how to help bumblebees throughout the year –bumblebeeconservation.org One last thought, please teach your children not to be afraid of bees, if one accidentally wanders into your house this spring, just calmly escort it out again.

PAGAN VIEWS

By Jo Belasco

I had been commissioned to take some photos at St Michael’s church in Stinsford. The project was to catalogue some restoration work by local stonemason Rebecca Freiesleben (abbotsbury stonework.com). The photos included a carving of St Michael defeating the devil in the shape of a dragon. From a Pagan point of view the dragon can be seen as representing the mass of ‘heathen’ religions before Christianity held sway. All a heathen means is a ‘person not belonging to a widely-held religion’. Once the job was over, I had a wander around the corner. It really did feel like this tree tapped me on the shoulder. Its presence is spine-tingling! Then a lady and her daughter appeared and seeing me staring at the tree recounted the story behind it. The lady pointed up to a rope which blended in so well with the loops of branches that I would not have noticed it without her intervention, saying: “Those ropes once tethered Thomas Hardy’s horse of the day. They were lifted up high as the tree grew… that’s how the story goes!” I guess horses gave way to automobiles, so they just left the ropes hanging there... Next, she pointed me in the direction of a ‘secret door’ into the tree’s garden. I was hesitant to go but you don’t question ladies who suddenly appear and tell you just what you had been wondering about! Whether this tree is THE TREE which gave its name to his book Under the Greenwood Tree, I do not know. But Hardy used Stinsford church as the model of Mellstock Church in said novel. St Michael’s was his parish church. He was christened in the font and grew up to teach Sunday school here and now this is where his heart is buried. He once described this area as ‘the most hallowed spot’. St Michael’s is a beautiful, rural, mostly 13th century church. The church is immediately off the A35 roundabout at the junction with the B3150. Turn onto the minor road towards Kingston Maurward College and gardens and then right on to Church Lane .

A BIT ROPEY: The rope hanging from the tree at St Michael’s was once used to tie Thomas Hardy’s horse. Below: Rebecca Freisleben’s carving and, right, the gardens

It’s the tree of knowledge

Join a Sustainable Dorset group – or start your own

Sustainable Dorset is urging people with an interest in environmental issues to join or start their own group. Dorset Green Living Groups are groups of people who want to make an effort to become more sustainable in the way they live their lives. You can join an existing group or start your own at greenliving.sustainabledorset. org/join-a-group. There are a few groups already operating, including Treadlightly – seven households living in Corscombe and Halstock parish. Hardy Avenue Greens meet in Hardy Avenue, Weymouth, while Green Ladies are an all-female group living in or near Marnhull. Dorset Council colleagues meet at Dorset Council (County Hall in Dorchester), while BCP Staff Green Living Project is made up of BCP staff members keen to explore how they can support climate action by reducing their carbon footprint in their everyday lives and save money too in the process! Portland 4 the Planet is for Portlanders wishing to lower

their carbon footprint by following the Dorset Green Living Project guide. Connect as a community, make friends and build resilience. The list shows large gaps in geography in West Dorset, and people are warmly invited to establish their own. Register at greenliving.sustainabledorset. org/membership-account/ membership-levels. Utter smut! The shocking truth about plants

FORAGING

By JOHN WRIGHT

I promised this in the first edition of WDM, so here it is. Be warned, however, it is for neither the squeamish nor the prudish. Until the late 17th century, the very idea that plants were sexual organisms and that flowers were sexual organs was absurd at best and blasphemous at worst. Surely God would not allow these emblems of innocence to involve themselves in such base behaviour? But, for the most part, they do. It was not until the early years of the 19th century that any discussion of this matter outside botanical circles was considered remotely acceptable. Most plants have male and female flowers on the same plant, while others come as male plants and female plants – dioecious plants, the word meaning ‘of two houses,’ More shocking than sex in plants, is that they can suffer from sexually transmitted diseases, caused, you guessed it, by the appropriately named Smut Fungi. Smuts are common, and there is every chance that your garden plants have, at one time or another, suffered these ‘wages of sin’. One group of plants, the perennial and dioecious Campions, suffer mightily from this pestilence, most commonly with the smut fungus, Microbotrium violaceum, on Red Campions. The fungus infects the entire aerial plant, then when it flowers, produces its conspicuous black spores on the anthers (the male organ), replacing the expected yellow of pollen. The spores are transmitted to an uninfected plant of either sex with gay abandon, via the normal routes followed by the pollen it has superseded. It will germinate on both sexes, and colonise both sexes. In any male plant, it will eventually produce spores on the plant’s anthers. If, however, it has infected a female plant, it cannot produce spores, because only males have the anthers on which they may be produced. The female flowers, with their female pistils, are useless to the fungus, even though they are larger and thus potentially more productive of spores. To circumvent this seemingly impossible obstacle, the infecting fungus supresses the expression of female parts (pistils), and allows anthers to grow where none should be by removing the female plant’s normal suppression of male parts. Effectively, it forms a transsexual plant. Red Campion is common in our hedgerows, so when they appear, do keep a look out for any with a blackened, sooty centre.