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EGERTON
Star & Garter Cottage Field
Help with advice and a grant towards re-establishment of
1.05 ha of semi-improved neutral grassland in the winter of 2000/2001.
This involved fencing the site so livestock can graze securely.
'Semi-improved' means that wildflower interest has not been completely
destroyed by ‘improving’ with chemicals and fertilisers.
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Cowslips are found in the Pembles Cross SNCI
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The site is part of Pembles Cross Site of
Nature Conservation Interest (SNCI). When last surveyed in 1999 cowslips,
pepper saxifrage, meadowsweet, common knapweed and greater burnet
saxifrage were present.
Most of the land surrounding the SNCI has been improved
or is arable and therefore this isolated site is even more important for
wildlife.
The KSCP also helped with grant aid towards the creation
of a 10 by 15 m pond and a channel in the field, and helped to gap up the
thick hedges.
The KSCP will survey the field this summer.
More on conserving
grasslands |
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Burscombe Cliff Farm
Volunteers planted, guarded and mulched 500 shrubs in
December 2000 to extend a gappy hedge, creating a thicket of hawthorn,
dogwood, field maple, dog rose and hazel. The thicket will be useful to
nesting birds and other animals, and will also help to protect this
organic farm from any pesticide drift.
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Wanden Farm and Wanden Barn
The KSCP helped the two landowners of Wanden Meadows
Site of Nature Conservation Interest with an application for Countryside
Stewardship which was successfully agreed in October 2000. Countryside
Stewardship provides payments over 10 years for the management of land
for wildlife and landscapes.
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One of the herb-rich Wanden Meadows. The white flower is
sneezewort.
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The site is 13.17 ha of unimproved pasture with small
fields and thick hedges, containing many tree and shrub species and many
ponds and small shaws. Sneezewort and yellow rattle are abundant
wildflowers.
Countryside Stewardship will ensure that the pasture is
managed appropriately and that three ponds are restored.
The floristic interest of the site was surveyed in June
and August of 2000 by the KSCP.
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Iden Farm Cottage
Field
The owners of this site received advice and grant aid
towards: the creation of a pond measuring 20 by 10m in early 2000, the
pond was lined with a butyl liner; 470m new hedge in early 1999; and the
sowing of 1.6 ha wildflower meadow in the autumn of 1998.
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The newly created pond and wild flower meadow at Iden Farm
Cottage Field
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Wildflower hay meadows are particularly
scarce in the countryside today, having declined nationally by 95% in the
last 25 years. The Low Weald traditionally had many of these herb rich
meadows. Prior to 1999 this meadow was an arable field containing oil seed
rape.
More on conserving
grasslands
Old Harrow Farm
Advice and grant aid was provided for de-silting two
ponds in early 2000 measuring 7 by 7m and 15 by 7m.
The Parishes of Egerton and Pluckley contain by far the
most ponds in the KSCP area. This is because parts of the parishes fall
into the Low Weald with its heavy clay geology. Although many ponds have
been lost in the countryside in recent years the Low Weald is still dotted
with them. However, existing ponds if they are to be maintained as ponds
will usually require digging out every so often to stop them succeeding,
eventually, to woodland. The best management proposal is often to dig a
new pond next to the old one.
More on ponds and other wetlands
Hollis Farm
The KSCP grant aided the planting, fencing and mulching
of 91m of mixed hedge containing hawthorn, field maple, hazel, dogwood and
burnet rose in February 2000.
Egerton web site
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