Cloudforest Four, Ennistymon
Wildflower Meadow
Our trees are in the ground and growing happily. But we’re not done!
On Cloudforest Four, we want to develop the unplanted areas into biodiverse habitats that will support the local pollinators and other insect life.
One phase of our pollinator plan for Cloudforest Four involves creating a wildflower meadow in the front field between the house, our forest treeline and the neighbouring sitka spruce plantation bordering the site.
This area was heavily trodden by cattle and is now populated mostly by creeping buttercup and rushes - which we have plenty of throughout the rest of our forest - so in the areas cleared by our forestry team during planting, we’re adding seed from native species local to this area. We’re also encouraging the existing seedbank the germinate so we can monitor what other species arrive given the opportunity!
A Work in Progress
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A Work in Progress 〰️
Supported by our CoolPartners!
We’d like to give a big shout-out to our CoolPartners Solar Clean Robotics for sponsoring the wildflower seed we added to the site this week.
Their support enabled us to source real native wildflower seed grown and collected here in Ireland and containing only species suited to this county and meadow situation. Thank you, Solar Clean Robotics!
Be part of the project
If you’d like to donate towards the cost of establishing and maintaining our wildflower meadow, please do!
Native Irish wildflower seed is costly, but well worth the investment. We’d like to create a wider diversity - this means sowing different seed mixes, and managing the meadow to control stronger plants like creeping buttercup creating a monoculture again.
We’ll send you a e-certificate confirming your sponsorship of our meadow rejuvenation too!
Our meadow story
Raking the soil to a fine tilth (Photo: Kim Lake)
Beautiful dandelion seedheads provide food for small birds (Photo: Kim Lake)
Another drive-by from an impatient starling wanting to inspect my work for snacks (Photo: Kim Lake)
Wavy bittercress (Cardamine flexuosa) thriving in amongst the grasses (Photo: Kim Lake)
Wavy bittercress (Photo: Kim Lake)
Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis) growing in the longer grasses at the edge of the sitka plantation (Photo: Kim Lake)
February 2024
March 2024
The field is filled with standing water and slurry from the cattle that had previously grazed the land, leading to an unwalkable and quite stinky area!
April 2024
Our forestry team banked up areas of the field, raising the soil height and carving a path through it to lead into the forestry areas. This disturbance left us with exposed soil, knocking back the dominant rushes, improving the drainage slightly and giving us a blank canvas for our meadow.
Despite the rain throughout spring, in the run-up to our meadow sowing the weather was surprisingly warm on Cloudforest Four, causing the clay soil to bake hard on the surface.
Our Woodland Manager Kim raked the surface to provide a fine tilth for the seeds to germinate in, and sowed the seed - monitored closely by quite a few hungry birds!
Raking and sowing by hand meant that we could take care not to remove existing wildflowers.
August 2024
The majority of flowers had started to go over, although the Redshank was still going strong, as were the corn marigolds and ox-eye daisies. We saw a lot of perennials that had spent the summer putting their energy into leafy growth, so we’re excited to see what pops up next year.