Meadows don’t stand still. I was reminded of this when chatting to Paul Castle of Highland Council recently. We got to talking about Farr Glebe in Bettyhill, and he was quick to let me know about the fantastic work being carried out by North Sutherland Wildlife Group. Under the catchy title ‘Sow Farr, Sow Good’ they have been using the meadow to great effect for pollinators … and people.
The project is set to run for at least the next couple of years. Hopefully it will further increase the flowering both within the meadow, and the area’s surrounding gardens.
In June of this year NatureScot funding, through the Volunteering Matters Action Earth initiative, helped with a planting event at Farr Glebe. As Susan Kirkup was delighted to note, “Lots of lovely healthy plants grew from our wildflower seed collected last year, so we had a planting pop-up event at the Farr Glebe Bumblebee Meadow. The weather was perfect ,and we had a good turn-out of people to help plant the barer areas of the meadow. Over 150 plants were put in – thereafter it was fingers crossed for good growing weather and that a decent number of plants reach maturity.”
Seed collecting had taken place the previous autumn and was well planned. An open invitation was extended to the local community, and the offer was made that people could grow some of the seed into plants in their own garden as well as replanting back at the Glebe. That was a fantastic way to extend the reach of the project.
Of course, this is Scotland and as we all know the weather can occasionally be, shall we say, challenging. Thus the seed collecting invitation reminded interested parties that the seed would need to be ripe and the weather dry. Therefore, the date of the collection was inevitably likely to be at short notice and dependent on a fair-weather forecast.
The project is part of a programme to help further diversify the popular meadow at the Farr Glebe Bumblebee Reserve in Bettyhill. The reserve is an important area for many bumblebees including, the nationally rare great yellow bumblebee (Bombus distinguendus), one of the Species on the Edge targets.
One intention is that seed will help to improve parts of meadow which are currently less diverse. A key ally in this quest is yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor), encouragingly also known as ‘the meadow maker’ and which only grows in association with various grasses.
Highlife Countryside Ranger Paul Castle is clearly delighted to work with the North Sutherland Wildlife Group. He makes no bones about their fantastic support for Farr Glebe and makes every effort to be on hand to explain the importance of the reserve and the work to help the bumblebees of north Sutherland. The ace up his sleeve is that he can suggest visitors might glimpse one of the rarest bumblebees in the UK, the Great Yellow.
Paul is full of praise for the work the wildlife group volunteers carry out. “After the seed gathering exercise there was a fantastic team effort to propagate things and enhance Farr Glebe. Amongst the seeds under Susan’s care were greater knapweed, field scabious, tufted vetch, burnet saxifrage and black medic. Thanks to everyone’s hard work we quickly had 90 greater knapweed and 50 field scabious for planting out at the Glebe bumblebee meadow.”
Farr Glebe is an important pollinator site in Sutherland and the team behind it are keen to do more. In an ideal world they would look to extend the site, but for now working with the local community to continually improve the site and spreading the word is a fine achievement.
Further reading:
Find out more about the work of the North Sutherland Wildlife Group.
Revisit our 2020 blog about Farr Glebe
All images courtesy and copyright of Stephen and Susan Kirkup
Scottish pollinators 