Love Where You Live, Hail To The Grafters

Thanks to a grant from the Wirral South ‘Love Where You Live’ fund, Wirral Countryside Volunteers have laid 400m of hedgerow at New Ferry Butterfly Park. These hedges are dense for smaller birds whilst retaining a fair proportion of flowers for insect and later berries for birds. The volunteers have gone one step further by increasing the biodiversity of the hedge bank of the recently laid hedges by plug planting 50 each of primrose, greater switchwort, hedge bedstraw and foxglove into the hedge banks.

Paul Loughnane, honorary secretary of Wirral Countryside Volunteers, said “These flowers, whilst adding colour and interest to the bottom of hedgerow, will be useful for wildlife. “In the coming years the primrose will produce an early nectar source for early emerging butterflies such as the brimstone and later in the season orange tip butterflies will nectar on the greater stitchwort flowers. Hedge bedstraw is the larval food of the common carpet moth and bumble bees will climb right into the purple spikes of foxglove flowers in search of nectar. So many hedge banks have become dull with low biodiversity, but not here.”

The grant also enabled the Volunteers to host on the same day an apple grafting workshop at the park, in conjunction with David Ellwand of Wirral Tree Wardens. Here participants could make their own apple tree of a defined final size with a variety of their choice, which is not the case by growing from seed.

David talked about explained the about the 40 or more local Cheshire and Lancashire apple varieties on offer, whether the variety was cooker, desert or dual, its appearance, its flavour, storage properties and whether it was an early or late cropper. Pencil size diameter tree cuttings called scions were collected in November. David you must have a big fridge! Then David explained about the different dwarfing root stock you can use to determine the final size of the fruit tree.

Despite the weather with vicious hail, 13 people under the shelter of a gazebo grafted apple and pear trees, and about 40 trees were grafted on the day. First we practiced on hazel sticks and then on to grafting scions to the root stocks. Grafting of the scions to the root stock was achieved using the whip-and-tongue groove method and then firmly bound with tape making sure the cambium layers of both knit together so there is a free flow of sap.

The newly created fruit trees will be planted at the park, in local gardens, a new community orchard at Claremont Farm, Clatterbridge and at Christ Church Higher Bebington where they are making the church grounds more ecological. The south Wirral area will be brightened up in a few years time with apple blossom in May. The blossom is good for honeybees and maintains local apple varieties. With 25 participants in total there was certainly a buzz about the park that day.