This week we are management planning for the National Trust at the wonderful landscape and gardens of Erddig in North Wales….here are some nice photos courtesy of the other Mike.
Nice Day In The Gardens of Erddig
Tag Archives: nature
Thinking Like A Mountain
This is one my personal favourite tunes that I have written. My first arrangement of the melody was grandiose and elaborate. But then I just sat down and played it on the acoustic guitar and it’s simplicity spoke far more clearly and purposefully to me, so that was it!
It’s a song dedicated to the amazing thoughts and writings of the great Aldo Leopold, who forever changed our thinking about our impact on the environment around us.
Inspirational Places – Cwm Idwal, Snowdonia National Park
The Music of a Landscape
I was once lying in a tent in the ancient and extremely evocative landscape of the Navajo National Monument in Arizona, listening to the wind in the juniper trees in otherwise total silence…years later I wrote this tune about it…
Available on the album “Heading West” on itunes, Amazon and all the others….
High Summer
Tranquillity
Music For One of the Greatest Nature Writers
Aldo Leopold was a great visionary writer who realised before most people that in conserving wild nature we save ourselves…
“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, “What good is it?” If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”
Music from the album “Round River” by Mike Howe
Amazing Hay Meadows
I’ve been away working again this week visiting yet more beautiful gardens and grasslands, and the absolute highlight of the trip was seeing this incredible hay meadow that had more orchids in it than I’ve ever seen in my life before.
In just this one field there are over 100,000 orchids of 5 different species.
The meadow was created by the National Trust in response to a request from The Prince of Wales to create a wildflower meadow in every county in Britain to celebrate the anniversary of the Queens coronation.
It was also a campaign to try to reclaim the glorious hay meadows that were once common in Britain, 98% of which we have lost to intensive agriculture since 1945, along with all of the wildlife that they supported such as wild flowers, butterflies, moths, bees and ground nesting birds such as meadow pipits and skylarks – all gone from our silent fields because of fertilisers, modern grass mixes, higher yields and the switch from hay making to silage.
Undoubtedly the star of the botanical show in this restored hay meadow was the rare and beautiful butterfly orchid. This is the first one I’ve ever seen….
I just hope that we can restore more of these once common traditional hay meadows to our countryside, so that the wildlife that we are in danger of losing forever can be around for our children to see and for future generations.
Flower Tunnels and Giant Trees
So this week I’ve been in North Wales doing some more work on my grasslands project for the National Trust, and I visited Bodnant Gardens which apparently are world famous, although I hadn’t heard of them and you probably haven’t either, which is a shame because they are absolutely magnificent! Because I wasn’t being a tourist (I was working!), I didn’t take lots of photos of all the lovely herbaceous borders and lawns and the mansion house, so I can’t show you those. I did, however, have to take photos of the amazing laburnum tunnel and the magnificent old trees that dominate and seem to exist in a different dimension and time to you and I. Anyway have a look first at the delightful laburnum tunnel, hand crafted by the very gifted National Trust gardeners who were all really nice to me and showed me around…..
And now feast your eyes on these humungous trees…..
Here’s an idea of the house and lawns (which I secretly love and would like to play tennis on given half a chance!)…
I can also report that the cream teas served were absolutely divine. It was a tough job but someone had to do it 🙂
Sunsets
It’s been a good few weeks for sunsets in these parts so here are a few more wonderful photographs from my friend Mike Alexander that caught my eye, oh and one that’s not so good from me 🙂
Mike Howe 