Saturday, 12th August 2023: litterpicking and mowing the orchid meadow

Today we had a magnificent turnout of twelve volunteers to litterpick and to help Leeds City Council ranger, Rachel, work on the Orchid Meadow.

Three of our number chose to litterpick and ranged widely through the woods from Buckstone Road, where we met, to the pond, Crag Lane and the Stairfoot Lane carpark. They picked up up three bags of litter on the way.

The rest of us set off to the Orchid Meadow with Rachel, armed with a brush cutter, scythes, rakes and tarpaulins.

The existence of the Orchid Meadow came to our attention in Summer 2014 when our treasurer Judith discovered lots of orchids flowering there. At that time there were lots of young trees growing in the meadow and it was surrounded by swathes of himalayan balsam. Since then we have done a lot of work on the meadow, under the leadership of Steve Joul, and it has blossomed into a wonderful wildflower meadow – as can be seen from the photograph above.

What you cannot see in the photograph are the many common spotted orchids concealed among the buttercups.

Here is a photograph of one of them.

Traditionally meadows were mown in mid to late Summer. The cuttings were then allowed to dry and removed after a few days to produce hay to feed livestock. This allowed flowering plants the chance to set seed, and the removal of the mowings reduced the nutrient levels in the soil and allowed flowers to compete with more vigorous grasses.

Much of Adel Woods was originally farmland, as evidenced by the many dry stone wall field boundaries – the farmhouse for Crag Farm used to stand in the area now used as a picnic area. Without regular mowing meadows will soon turn into scrubland and eventually woodland as shown in this photograph of the same field, taken in July 2016.

So over the last few years, as a ranger with Leeds City Council Steve Joul has mown the orchid meadow in late Summer – and last year as a private citizen he scythed the meadow and raked off the cuttings on his own!

Last week, Rachel cut about half of the meadow with a brush cutter last week, and our task today was to continue the mowing – Rachel with a brush cutter and three of us with scythes – and rake off the mowings.

None of us had used a scythe before and Rachel showed us what to do. One essential part of using a scythe is to sharpen it with a whetstone every five minutes or so to keep it cutting well.

Due to the fact that we are a volunteer group, we are not able to leave the cuttings to dry, so the next step today was to rake up the cuttings and transport them to compost heaps in the adjacent woods.

Friends of Adel Woods are a friendly group and we are always looking for new members. If you would like to help look after our woods, get some fresh air and exercise in beautiful surroundings, and make new friends, please get in touch.

Our next work party is on Saturday the 16th September 2023 when we will be clearing scrub from around our local landmark, the Buck Stone.