At Caring For Life we now have a sizeable “wild garden” and recent visitors who came to undertake a “Fungus Foray” on site, to help us in identifying species, were amazed at the variety of habitats on the farm and thrilled to see the progress being made.

This is in any case no ordinary conservation project, because it exists not only to care for the environment, but also to enable formerly socially excluded people to get involved in conservation and to learn to appreciate the beauty around them.

The past few weeks have seen a number of groups of volunteers from the corporate sector getting involved in helping us with our seasonal conservation tasks. Asda have loaned their head office staff on a number of occasions and they have been a marvellous support, getting stuck into a whole variety of tasks; not easy ones either!

One team strimmed the wild flower bank and raked it off hard before sowing yellow rattle seed, to help to inhibit grass growth, thus enabling wild flowers to grow through in the spring. They then planted more than 500 wild flower plugs into the area and we do look forward to seeing the results of their hard work next year.

A further team worked on the ponds and scrapes, strimming and cutting back pond margin plants in order to avoid the plants dying back into the water and causing the water to be too nutrient-rich.

Then another valiant team came for the day and undertook pond maintenance, a task which is not much fun when it is starting to get cold. The task has to wait until the autumn though, or breeding sites for waterfowl are disturbed, along with dragonfly nymphs and a host of other pond creatures.

The team cut back reeds in two thirds of the ponds, leaving a section undisturbed for safe habitat for creatures dependent on the pond. Bulrushes were cut down under the water level, in order to avoid the pond in effect filling up wit reeds and losing water. Other reeds were cut down and sludgy leaf mould was pulled out of the pond to avoid it silting up. All the debris was left on the pond banks for a few days to allow any pond dwellers to make their way back into the water!

Another group filled hessian sacks with barley straw, weighted down with limestone, and sank them in the ponds, to act as blanket-weed inhibitors.

Later in the season, teams will be on hand to plant further triple thorn hedgerows and it is thrilling to see how well the existing new hedgerows have developed, growing into strong hedges and a wonderful habitat for birds and insects. Regular volunteers have worked hard to prune the hedges, so that they fill out and thicken up. The hedges are full of colour, with bright red hips and haws, plus purple sloes.

We are indebted to all our volunteer helpers and grateful for the support of those in the corporate sector. What may make a welcome change from an office environment for some is actually pretty hard work, but it is also an invaluable help to Caring For Life, let alone to the natural environment here.