Shire horses help plant new city wildflower meadow

7 hours ago

Alice Whaley,at Parker's Piece, Cambridgeand

Katy Prickett

The land was prepared and drilled by a team of shire horses

Alice Whaley/BBC A team of shire horses pulling a red seed drill at Parker's Piece, Cambridge, through brown soil. The horses are brown with white flashes on their noses and white fetlocks. There is a man on the left, whose head and torso is largely hidden by one of the horses. There is another man behind the rotovator, who is wearing a green cap and gilet. — The land was prepared and drilled by a team of shire horses

A team of shire horses has been recruited to help turn a corner of a city centre park into a wildflower meadow.

The transformation of a section of Parker's Piece in Cambridge is a collaboration between the city council and King's College's head gardener Steve Coghill.

He also oversaw the creation of a wildflower meadow on part of the lawn at the University of Cambridge college in 2020.

"The lovely thing about these meadows is that they'll be fantastic sources for pollen and nectar for a wide range of wildlife," Coghill said.

"We're working with Guy Belcher, biodiversity officer, and Kenny McGregor, who's the tree officer [at the city council]."

Parker's Piece is best known after university students played football there and published an early set of rules for the game in 1848.

It is about 24 acres (9.7 hectares) wide, and the wildflower meadow has been created on the south edge of the park, on either side of a path in front of the University Arms Hotel.

Their owner David Lawless said it was a great opportunity to see how the Victorian and Edwardian equipment worked

Alice Whaley/BBC Two men standing on either side of a brown white shire horse, on the grass at Parker's Piece, Cambridge. The man on the left is wearing a dark grey cap and brown jacket over a blue shirt. The man on the right is wearing a black cap, a red neckerchief, blue shirt and green braces. — Their owner David Lawless said it was a great opportunity to see how the Victorian and Edwardian equipment worked

Coghill said it has been planted with the same mix of seeds he used at King's, which includes cornfield annuals, followed by perennials in future years.

The land was prepared and drilled using late 19th and early 20th Century equipment, pulled by shire horses.

He said: "It's easier to do with horses because it's carbon neutral, there's no noise involved, as you'd get with tractors, and there's certainly no diesel involved."

The college has used shire horses to harvest its meadow since it was first planted - and an additional benefit is the horse manure, which "we can always put on the roses", he added.

Cornflowers, poppies, corn marigolds, and oxeye daisies should be in bloom along one edge of the park from next May

Alice Whaley/BBC Two men, each wearing a flat cap, walking behind a red seed drill pulled by a pair of brown and white shire horses at Parker's Piece, Cambridge. They are walking through brown soil. Behind them is a yellow brick terrace of houses, with large arched windows. — Cornflowers, poppies, corn marigolds, and oxeye daisies should be in bloom along one edge of the park from next May

David Lawless, from Waldburg Shires in Alconbury, near Huntingdon, said: "We've seeded it with a Massey Harris seed drill, but we've actually found that it was obviously designed for a more coarser seed, so we've actually got what they call a shandy barrel, which is just a little bit like a wheelbarrow with a long hopper on it.

"It's fabulous to get the opportunity to actually get them in the ground and get them working, and then we learn about them and their pitfalls as we found out today."

The meadow should "burst into colour around about May or June time" and the horses will return later in the summer to complete its harvest, added Coghill.

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