'Conserving the past for a creative future'

Wildflower list

Ecologist and botanist Julie Rose kindly undertook to seek out wildflowers in the Belan grounds and has now kindly produced a comprehensive and surprisingly extensive list'. Any interested person who wishes to see the full list should send a message via the 'contact' page on this website.' 

The Wildflower meadows 2022

This year both the meadows were less colouful than previously.  In one, plantains were very much in evidence, and the other produced a big crop of yellow rattle. When sowing wildflowers the advice is to include plenty of yellow rattle seed as it stops the grass from growing and allows the wild flowers to flourish.  Perhaps we over did it and maybe we will see the results next year!

The Wildflower Meadows 2020 &2021

We are delighted that our plans for a wild flower meadow came to fruition in the Spring of 2020 following the preparation of the ground and seed sowing in September 2019.  Fort Belan is situated within a 'Site of Special Scientific Interest',(SSSI), so only wildflower seeds, indigenous to the area, were sown.  This meadow gave pleasure to the few people who were able to see it, (because of lockdowns).

In the following September the necessary strimming and hay-making were carried out and a small area was re-seeded.

In the second (experimental) meadow, which had been left unseeded in 2019,  mainly grass and plantains grew.  We should really have carried on with the experiment and left the area to itself for years longer, but the first meadow proved so delightful that it was impossible to resist the opportunity to have a second.  There is an area in the Fort grounds which is a mirror image of the first meadow area and this ground was scarified and seeded in the Autumn of 2020.

The flowers which appeared in the following Spring were very different in each area which was a surprise, but we are told that that is to be expected.

Now the hay making season will soon with us again!