November 2015

Oh well, summer is over and winter approaching, but Warley Place still attracts many appreciative visitors and will do through the coldest months and before you know it our spring open weekends will be upon us again.

 

We are having yet another think about how we might be able to improve the visitors' experience during these open weekends. One of the things is perhaps to change the name, as it infers that the reserve is not open at other times. Safety is always a consideration and to that end some of the paths have had a material applied to make the surface less slippery. Some people have said it makes them less natural looking and this is true, but at times some of them were getting quite dangerous and the natural remedies we applied did not seem to last.

 

The biggest problem for us and visitors alike is the restricted car parking. We have made a few minor improvements which have allowed us to squeeze a few additional cars in, but a significant change could only be made by encroaching on the meadow itself. That is something we would be very reluctant to allow just for a few weeks each year.

 

You may have noticed that the additional path across the walled garden, reported in our last news, is complete and visitors can walk along it. We are not restoring Warley Place in the same way as Heligan was but occasionally we find that an original feature can be reinstated without spoiling the natural look or the site's function as a nature reserve. You may have noticed that the Pleasaunce, the area in front of the conservatory, is lighter than it was because some of the trees have been cut down. This was done after consultation with the local council, (as the area is subject to a tree preservation order) who felt it was good forestry management, but it also makes it more like its original use as an open area with a few specimen trees and surrounded by shrubs. It was originally a lawn but whether grass will grow again or not who knows. Similarly additional rockeries have been uncovered so that visitors can see what they were like, but we will not be planting anything in them. We will see what grows naturally, which is what we did with the other rockery in that area and which now includes some interesting flora.

 

We have been looking further at the maintenance of the brickwork and have spoken to various conservational bodies about the best way of doing it. A few volunteers will probably go on a historic brick restoration course to make sure it is done appropriately.

 

Regular visitors will have perhaps always been puzzled by the band of blind daffodils stretching across the daffodil bank. We have been unable to find a definite reason for this but one of those suggested was that they are too close together. An area across this strip was selected and the daffodils all dug up. They were replanted further apart and we will see what the result is next spring. A further reason could be the lack of water in the early spring but why it should affect this strip more than anywhere else would be hard to understand. However if it is particularly dry we may water part of this strip to see if that makes any difference.

 

Finally, apologies for the long gap between this news item and the previous one, due to the writer being out of action for a few months.

 

John C