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Betty's lends a helping hand to pioneering wood meadow near York

The Hagge Woods Trust has paid tribute to the hard work of local volunteers and staff from Betty’s Tearooms this week at the Three Hagges Wood Meadow site at the Hollicarrs, between Escrick and Riccall.

Seeds of three late flowering species of meadow flower have been planted in the nursery in readiness for planting out next spring, while 3000 small plug plants including Greater Knapweed, Cowslip, Viper’s Bugloss, and Wild Marjoram have been planted into the wood-meadow by staff from sponsor Betty’s and another 1600 by community volunteers.

Lin Hawthorne, botanist for the Hagge Woods Trust, said: “Since Betty’s initial sponsorship of the nursery, we have sown, raised and planted out almost 10,000 plugs of native meadow flowers to enhance the wood-meadow.”

Volunteers have come from Riccall, Escrick and Wheldrake as well as from York. We are delighted to be making these strong bonds with local villages.

Recent recruit Jo Gee from Wheldrake said: “I really enjoyed my morning volunteering. Being in the fresh air, doing something practical to help nature was great! What the team are doing, creating a wood-meadow to encourage biodiversity, is wonderful and it was a pleasure to help out by sowing wild flower seeds.”

The Three Hagge Woods Meadow hopes to build upon this recent flurry of activity with local volunteers and to offer a range of activities for people of all ages and abilities in the local community.

The Trust intends to recruit a team of individuals and aim to have a dedicated meeting place for them to volunteer, learn more about the planting and biodiversity of the site, and importantly have a warm cuppa afterwards.

Lin Hawthorne, said: “We don’t only enhance the wood meadow plants for pollen and nectar, we also select native plants that are the larval food plants for butterflies, moths, solitary bees and many other less glamorous pollinators.”

For further information, please contact Emma Daniels emma@haggewoodstrust.org.uk or follow our developments and catch up news at www.haggewoodstrust.org.uk, Facebook www.facebook.com/Three-Hagges-Wood-Meadow or Twitter https://twitter.com/Haggewoodstrust.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Robert Beaumont .