Going Green

Going Going Green.......

When we started converting the Barns into Cottages it was at the forefront of our thoughts to incorporate as many green policies as we could. Now a year on it is constantly evolving.

Last year saw the development of the new Vegetable garden which I love. A fantastic place to be and we were lucky enough with our produce to still be eating our onions and potatoes now and the abundance of sweet peas were an added bonus! They filled the cottage vases thought the summer and smelt divine.

This year we have seen the arrival of the Pigs and Cows and we are now planning Chickens to be next! I am surrounded by copies of Smallholder and Country Living Magazines Easter “Hot chick pin up” trying to decide what sort ,how many, what kind of house....... We will keep you posted!

We have expanded the herbaceous cottage garden borders and I wait with baited breath to see what will appear. Already small red Peony shoots are visible through my heavy layers of good organic muck! And the delicate fury buds of the Magnolias stand waiting to steel the show!

We have planted hundreds of trees on the Farm and we hope as they mature hope to welcome even more bird life. For the last eight years we have ben in a Higher Level Stewardship scheme. This is an initiative to encourage and improve the flora and fauna. We have introduced a much less intensive grazing regime, and also a programme of capital works which include the planting of native trees and hedges that include Hawthorn, Blackthorn, Crab Apple, Dog Rose, field Maple, Guelder Rose ,Hazel and Oak. I have spent several hours with my secateurs walking the hedgerows trimming the tops in the hope we will get nice fat hedges. We have also been working on the restoration of our dry stone walls. We also made a wildfowl scrape and this month we have sighted a pair of ducks there! We have started to see if guests can add any new sighting to our list of birds that live here at Southlands and around Gunnerton. There is nothing quite like the arrival of spring and with it the dawn chorus.