Alice Herbert and her mother Patricia live in Styal, a small village just outside Wilmslow in Cheshire. 

Find out how, with help from the Pollinating Cheshire project, they turned five acres of old farmland into a haven for wildlife.

How did you get involved with Cheshire Wildlife Trust, what motivated you?

Patricia: We’re sitting in the garden today of what used to be a farmhouse. The land isn’t farmed anymore after the tenant farmer passed away, so we didn’t know what to do with it. 

Alice: It was my brother, Will, who suggested we get in touch with Cheshire Wildlife Trust. He’s a keen ornithologist and thought that you might be able to help advise about how to attract wildlife and birds into the field. 

Patricia: It's about five acres, so we were advised that it would be suitable either for a meadow or for trees. We thought maybe the meadow would be more interesting for us and also slightly quicker to mature than the woodland would be! 

What have you done?

Alice: Well, Hannah [Dalton, Senior Living Landscape Officer at Cheshire Wildlife Trust] came along and had a look. She brought their Ponds Advisor who came to look at the ponds as well. In the end, we have had two ponds restored in the field and we've had the field planted with wildflowers as a wildflower meadow.  

The process began with Hannah carrying out a survey of the field to see what was in it. There was very little diversity, because it had been cut early by the farmer to make hay, so the flowers didn’t ever have chance to go to seed. Hannah had to do all sorts of things like check the nutrient levels in the soil. The Ponds Advisor came and dug the ponds out. Hannah prepared the field to make a seed bed, then arrived and sowed it with bags full of seed, which  she’d harvested from other fields around Cheshire.  

Help us create and restore more meadows across Cheshire

What wildlife have you seen here?

Patricia: We've seen more ducks, geese, large birds of that sort. As for the vegetation, well it looks different! It was pretty well, just rye grass before and it's obviously much more varied now, but it's still early in the year. 

Alice: Last year we had way more butterflies in the field than we've ever had. I can remember last year walking through and there were just butterflies coming out of the meadow wherever I walked. It's lovely. They’ve got to be a highlight.

We’ve also seen more birds. You become more aware of it as well. Because we're doing something proactive to try and attract more wildlife, we're looking much more than we were. We've got a barn owl now we think, which is lovely. I don't know whether that's to do with the wilding of the of the meadow but it's an amazing treat. 

Patricia: Well, I can look at it over rather a long time because I'm old. I can tell you that when we first came here about 60 years ago, there were many more swallows, many more birds all together and many more insects. I think the whole country is probably very much depleted from what it was 60 years ago. What we're hoping now is that perhaps we're clawing a little bit of it back.

Are there any species you're hoping to see but haven't yet?

Patricia: I'd love to think we would one day have nightingales, but I think it may not ever happen. I don't think we’re quite nightingale county. But we have we have left quite a lot of scrub, which hopefully provide suitable habitat, But I think really it's the insects. Because unless we get the good insect population then birds are not going to flock here in their numbers.  We would greatly welcome more insects!

Alice: It would be lovely to get the swallows back. We did have swallows until a few years ago. They were nesting in our outhouses. But for the last few years they've not been back. If they came back that would be really lovely.

Help us create more wildflower havens for wildlife

Why do you think this type of work is important?

Patricia: I think this type of work is so important because the whole of the country is depleted in so many ways. I've lived in Cheshire nearly all my life. I worry about my great grandchildren not seeing a quarter of the things that we used to see regularly. Hopefully we can get a little bit of it back. Who knows? I think there are other projects in and around our village which Cheshire Wildlife Trust are doing. If that's repeated over the country everywhere, then things might really take a turn for the better.

Have you worked with any of the neighbouring landowners in the village?

Alice:  We've talked to some of our neighbours since we’ve done the field. They've had a look at it and had the same idea for theirs because a couple of the houses around us have also got fields.

There was a farmer who once kept some sheep here and they were also wondering what to do with that field. So, they chatted to us and we put them in touch with Cheshire Wildlife Trust. With a bit of luck, we might end up with quite a corridor around here adding directly onto our field. The bigger the corridor is, the better! Not just for the meadow, but also with the hedges as well so that there's also a good hedge corridor.

We've got the golf course on the other side of our field on two sides so that's also quite nice because it means it's not going to be built on or developed. 

What would you say to someone thinking about making their land better for nature?

Patricia: Get on with it!

Alice: Apart from anything else, it's so beautiful. By early summer last year the field was looking prettier than it's ever been really. So, it was just lovely to walk around and see all the different grasses and flowers which we've never seen in the field before.  That's just a such a joy. It's lovely. 

Help us create and restore more meadows across Cheshire

Alice: Life-enhancing!

Patricia: Hopeful.

Alice: Creating and working on the meadow and having such a lovely variety of flowers and grasses and to have the pond... it just makes us want to go outside much more. It makes us more aware of how lucky we are to live here and how important it is not to lose it. Coming for a walk in the evenings when the sun is starting to go down, everything smells lovely, the birds are so noisy and you get lovely sunsets reflected on the pond. And lovely rainbows! It's very rewarding.

Patricia: We do hope we're not just in it to gratify ourselves but because it's contributing to the wider scene. 

Help us create and restore more meadows across Cheshire