CPRE Bedfordshire recently celebrated its fourth Living Countryside Awards, recognising groups or individuals making special efforts to preserve or enhance rural life in the area.
This year’s ceremony was at Shortmead House, Biggleswade (itself an award winner in 2010) and was presented by farmer and NFU President Peter Kendall. Categories included Sustainable Living and Landscape Improvement, and the latter highlighted some fantastic projects which are really benefiting the countryside and rural communities in the county.
In Aspley Guise, the Parish Council and a group of volunteers set about improving a disused piece of land which was attracting vandalism and have transformed the site into a much appreciated village asset. It now has open grassland, fruit trees, a willow maze and play equipment. But the highlight is a spectacular wildflower meadow, full of colour and interest, and improving year on year.
Aspley Guise meadow © CPRE Bedfordshire
In Eggington, a huge voluntary project carried out on Stockwell Farm required the planting of 100,000 trees over some 80 acres. Ten years in the making, the woodlands now provide a rich habitat with indigenous Bedfordshire species. Broad avenues through the hilltop woods are lightly mowed for the benefit of visitors, who are welcome to explore this new landscape.
Andrew Phillips is a Bedfordshire arable farmer growing wheat and oilseed rape, and in 2010 won CPRE Bedfordshire's Mark for improving the landscape of Northwood End Farm near Haynes. Back in the 1960s, his father took advantage of grants to rip out hedges, fill in ponds and fell spinneys – part of a generation of farmers who were encouraged to grow as much as they could.
CPRE Bedfordshire's Living Countryside Awards judges
But the end result for the landscape was one vast field stretching over 220 acres; a ‘wheat prairie’, as some would call it, nearly the size of 150 football pitches. When Andrew took over the running of the farm, in 1995, he wanted to restore the traditional English landscape that had been uprooted.
Over the past 15 years, he’s gradually replaced lost features. That huge field has been divided into six smaller ones, each with wildlife corridors on their margins that provide nesting space for birds and small mammals. He’s encouraging insect biodiversity with a beetle bank and by planting pollen, nectar and wild birdfriendly mixes of seed.
Northwood End Farm © CPRE Bedfordshire
Because Andrew has enhanced the farm’s natural environment, it enjoys lots of visitors and residents: skylarks, buzzards, barn owls and more butterflies than ever before. And people, too – a new permissive footpath across the farm links to other local paths to make a pleasant walk for ramblers.
Replacing his hedges and putting the footpaths back in has had a small impact on yields, but the money Andrew gets from agri-environment schemes compensates for this. Andrew finds it somewhat ironic that he’s now using stewardship grants to reverse the damage caused by the grant system of his father’s era, but is passionate about conservation and how more farmers are now building it into their businesses.
‘We’re more aware now that the public want us to work in a way that looks after the environment. If we’re getting public money through subsidies, we have to do what the public want.’ A statement backed-up by a recent poll by CPRE which found 78% of people want farmers to get more support to look after the landscape and wildlife for future generations.
‘It’s very important we give something back,’ says Andrew. ‘We’re only stewards of the land for the time we’re looking after it, and I’m trying to leave it in a better state than it was in when I took it on.’
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CPRE Bedfordshire's Living Countryside Awards
