Budleigh Past and Present

A good ecological footprint on my moss lawn I see that just over a year ago I was inspired  to write about the joy of a mossy lawn here This year, after a mild October, the UK was subjected to heavy rainfall, especially in the South West. The Met Office has warned that the country could be facing one of its wettest winters ever. All of which is good news for moss lovers - myself included - who long ago gave up on the idea of waging war on bryophytes.  These are the little creatures which make your lawn feel like a soft and yielding carpet instead of looking like a bowling green.   They seem to be the chief target of garden chemical companies who are busy poisoning the planet.       Bryophytes are the oldest land plants on earth, and have been around for 400 million years or more. Across the Atlantic, they seem to be treated more charitably. The fashion for moss lawns is growing steadily and my friend Mo...

Flooded fields between Annacloy and Ballynahinch, County Down, Northern Ireland Photo credit Ardfern Having spent many years of my childhood on the now disastrously flooded Somerset Levels, and still full of memories of my research last year into 19th century Budleigh Salterton spongiologist Henry Carter FRS, I read with interest Simon Barnes’ article in yesterday’s Times newspaper. ‘Dredging up old ideas won’t save the Levels’ was its title. No, believes the author. What is needed is in his words “a bloody great sponge” placed upstream to soak up water and then release it slowly. “Such sponges are known as upland bogs, moors, woodlands, wetlands and species-rich grasslands.”   The picture says it all: an overwhelmed flood sign Photo credit Bob Embleton And maybe he should have added mosslands. For in our hillside cottage here in Budleigh Salterton we’re only too aware of the ...

  Orchis mascula, the early purple orchid Well, what a summer! A real summer at last, which left most things in the garden gasping for rain, which finally came, only to be followed by another long drought. The one part of the garden which seemed not to care too much what kind of weather we were having was the lawn. The back lawn anyway. And that’s because it consists of inches of moss. Conditioned as I was to expect a traditional English greensward when we bought our house in Devon six years ago I’d lost no time in calling out the experts to see how they would tackle the problem. They nodded wisely when I showed them our green expanse - which actually looks quite convincing especially with the stripes left after mowing. But those footprints that we left in the deep pile of what was supposed to be a lawn was clear evidence, they told me, that there was probably not a single blade of grass in the whole thing. The only solution would be to have it all re-turfed, fol...