Grasslands

Flower-rich grasslands are among the most treasured habitats of the Wye Valley. Wonderful habitats for wildlife, they provide feeding and nesting places for birds and contain a rich variety of plants and insects.

Over the years, as farming has become more intensive, many have been ploughed or ‘improved' by reseeding or treating with fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides. Meanwhile others have been lost through neglect.

Many areas in the AONB are characterised by patchworks of small grass fields and pastures, like "The Hudnalls", formerly a large common for the settlements of Brockweir, Hewelsfield and St Briavels. In the 1800s this area became divided into numerous smallholdings as local people encroached on the common. Due to the small field size, much of the grassland remains semi-natural and unimproved agriculturally. Today's residents often keep horses or sheep, or let their pasture.

A Parish Grasslands Project covering this area has brought together local people who own and want to manage and maintain their flowery fields. This community network of residents, local farmers and smallholders has been co-operating since June 2001, carrying out a field-by-field survey, sharing knowledge and advice and helping field owners enter the Countryside Stewardship Scheme.

Members have collected a wealth of information about the rich plant life in their fields. Botanical finds have included Dyers' Greenweed, which looks like a miniature broom, with dense clusters of yellow, pea-like flowers on short, shrubby growth. Back in the 1920's this was not uncommon locally in rough meadows, but is now rare.

On the other side of the Wye from the Parish Grasslands Project, the Monmouthshire Meadows Group has a similar role in managing and conserving small pieces of grassland.

Meanwhile on the Woolhope Dome, in Herefordshire, the landscape of woods, hedges, unspoilt streams, and traditional orchards includes grassland abundant with wild flowers. The Woolhope Dome Project helps conserve the area by offering information, advice and practical help to landowners and land managers. The Project is a partnership between local people, the AONB, English Nature, Forestry Commission and Herefordshire Nature Trust.

The project operates a grazing scheme and encourages the use rare breeds, which do well on unimproved pasture and will eat the coarser vegetation to control scrub and weeds.

Heathland

The AONB contains very little dwarf-shrub (such as heather) heathland. Coppett Hill to the north-east of Symonds Yat seems to support mostly bracken, as do small former heaths near Trellech village. Heathland in Trellech Common, once extensive, is now reduced to fragments in woodland plantation rides and tracks and on the fringes of Cleddon Bog (west of Llandogo). Work is currently being carried out by the Forestry Commission and Forestry Commission Wales to restore heathland at three sites within the AONB - Broad Meend and Beaon Hill in Monmouthshire and The Park in Tidenham, Gloucestershire. All three sites are now being grazed by Exmoor ponies, several bought using grant aid from the AONB's Sustainable Development Fund (SDF).

See our 'news' page for details of Exmoor ponies on Broad Meend

 

Bog

Two examples exist in the Wye Valley. Cleddon Bog seems to be a remnant of Trellech Common, which was never enclosed. Whitelye Common (to the south-east) is a small bog which until recently was almost overgrown with invading birch.