Getting down to it

July and August 2019


Weeding heather

It’s an odd thing to be weeding around heather. You don’t see anybody doing that on the moors around Rothbury. But our patches of heather at Gibside are constantly invaded by other species. Even the well-established area at the north end of the Hollow Walk benefits from the occasional clear-out of birch, bramble and the dreaded western hemlock. Two or three patches are now better able to look after themselves, but more recently planted areas need a bit of gardening. Some might think it wrong to be interfering in this way, but really, it’s what we do at Gibside – as is done in many other ‘natural’ habitats: we give nature a helping hand. And that includes encouraging variety as well as ridding the place of plants that just don’t belong.

Before weeding

After weeding - heather now visible

Field assessment

More often than not, identifying plants is more a test of the ageing memory than it is of field botany knowledge. Joining in with the rangers, though, on hands and knees in sheep-chomped fields trying to spot and then put a name to the remaining bits of vegetation in any given metre square was, indeed, a challenge. We were replicating a Field Assessment made four years ago. A field assessment is a sort of plant quality survey of Gibside’s farm fields. Whilst it’s perfectly acceptable to note anything growing, the main purpose is to check out the presence of a number of indicator species

What's that flower?

Positive indicators include Bird’s foot trefoil, Meadow buttercup, Selfheal, Red clover, White clover, Germander speedwell and many more. The negative indicators are few: Broad-leaved dock, Stinging nettle, Soft rush, Thistles and Ragwort.

Birds foot trefoil

Red clover

White clover

Self heal

The data is in but, like all statistics, requires professional interpretation. It looks encouraging, though.


Tick monitoring

Working with Gibside’s rangers invariably takes us off the tracks and into the woods and other wild places where visitors tend not to go. Losing ourselves amongst nature is one of the main reasons for working as a Conservation Volunteer, but it has its drawbacks. It’s like this: we love nature but we hate ticks. They’re nasty little things with unpleasant eating habits and, worst still, can be carriers of some horrible diseases. And the population is growing.

A few years back, researchers at Liverpool University set up a project to assess the distribution of the various species of ticks across the nation. We thought we’d have a go at Gibside and borrow their strategy to do so. This involves dragging a metre square white sheet across vegetation for ten metres in one direction, then turning around and dragging it back again and counting how many ticks have been picked up. We’re not attempting to identify them, just count them. Of course, you don't get them all, but we can, hopefully, get a density comparison across the estate. We’re just at the learning stage. Or, put another way, we haven’t caught many. Maybe there aren’t many to catch. That would be a good thing.

The tick collector at work

Betony in bloom on The Avenue bank

This year has been a good year for some species of butterfly, in particular, Painted lady butterflies.

A Painted lady butterfly

A Red admiral butterfly

And now as Autumn approaches mushrooms are starting to make an appearance...

A group of Shaggy parasol mushrooms

Another task assigned to our team was helping to eradicate Himalayan balsam from the estate. We try really hard but are helpless against the exploding seed heads.

Terry surrounded by head height bracken

 attempts to remove the Himalayan balsam. 

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne