Love Lane Wildlife Garden

PEN are adding an Edible Forest to Love Lane this year thanks to a grant from Local Food. This summer there will the chance to learn your Edible Weeds (Spring, Summer, and Autumn), Make your own Herbal Balms, Get Growing, Introduction to Forest Gardening and Beekeeping. The workshops are subsidied by the grant so please come and join in.

PEN volunteers have also been creating a Veg Plot area on the field to give people a little room to experiment.

The site is a semi natural woodland and semi improved pasture of about 2 and half acres on Love Lane. The pasture land would be improved as a Woodland Edge Habitat which is excellent for wildlife and will leave an open wildflower meadow area that the local community can also enjoy. The steep slope that runs alongside Love Lane have benn planted with trees that provide valuable food source for wildlife such as Hazel, Rowan, Blackthorn, Elderberry, and Field Maple.

The wildflower meadow is a centre space for picnics, workshops and more. PEN volunteers have planted native wildflower species and trees for shade and beauty. The species that are currently dominant in the semi improved pasture are Ribwort plantain, Creeping buttercup, Yorkshire fog, Cock’s foot, bramble, Broad-leaved dock and bracken.

The diversity of the meadow area will be increased by planting native wildflower species suitable for a traditional meadow. The strip that runs alongside the river is a flood plain and been planted with willow. There is already natural regeneration of Alder amongst the bramble which is a suitable species and these will be left to grow.