Volunteers wanted for Ragwort pulling at Newbridge Demesne

The meadows at Newbridge Demesne are some of the most attractive and important meadows in the county and support a wide variety of plants including the legally protected Meadow Barley. All these flowers offer pollen and nectar for many insects such as bees, hoverflies and butterflies.

To keep these meadows in good conditions they need to be cut once a year and the hay gets collected. One of the main challenges for the meadow management is to control Ragwort as it is a poisonous plant in the hay.

Hans Visser, Biodiversity Officer with the Council said “We don’t want to use herbicides in these meadows to control the Ragwort to protect the rich diversity on plant and animal life, so we are pulling the Ragwort by hand instead. This approach does mean a lot of extra work is needed to keep the Ragwort under control.

That is why we are looking for volunteers to give us a hand this Saturday to remove as much Ragwort as we can from these meadows.  Any help is appreciated, and you are more than welcome to come for the whole day as well as just an hour."

For those interested in helping on Saturday 10th July, the meeting point is the lawn in front of Newbridge House at 10am. Gloves and a safety talk will be provided by the Council.

For any queries regarding this event, please email biodive%[email protected] " rel="nofollow"> [email protected] .