Visit us and learn about our projects for protecting and appreciating the natural world around us.
Half the land here is naturally wooded, some of it very old. We leave the undergrowth in place and dead branches litter the wood floor. At dawn, dusk and after the rain you have birdsong (nightingale, cuckoo, golden oriole, hoopoe). Other lodgers in the woodland include mosquitoes, hornets, ticks, fleas and harvest mites.
Our old tractor maintains about 3km of tracks in the fields. Many of these tracks are changed from one year to the next to keep a mosaic of vegetation of different heights and ages. This gives insects etc somewhere to live and hide while they complete their life-cycles.
The figs, blackberries and wild plums ripen in August and September, and we’ll lend you a basket so you can pick them.
The first professional wildlife audit here was done in 2002. Since then we’re slowly building up a picture of a rich and diverse ecosystem. Some of the classes studied include Coleopteres, Lepidopteres, Orthopteres, Odonates, Ornithology. More than 300 Coleopteres have been identified so far, and almost 300 Lepidopteres.