Public Places


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My job is not to lay the law down, but to achieve results collaboratively by involving as many people as I can and encouraging volunteers to be honest and feisty as we run a tight ship


generation of broadleaved trees to replace coniferous species, planted originally for timber, and create lighter, warmer, sheltered conditions to encourage wildflowers and insects.


In the West Park, teams are clearing purple‐flowering rhododendron variety Ponticum to help establish native species such as oak, ash and pine. “It’s cut back heavily across Trust properties as it likes to flourish,” Gary notes.


Also, fashioning scrapes or shallow ponds within the grassland helps upland birds such as lapwing and curlew find insects for their young, the Trust reports.


Sheep and traditional breeds of cattle grazing the rough grasslands will bring long‐ term conservation gains “unattainable using human interventions”.


In summer, such landscape management helps fungi thrive ‐ such as Waxcaps: ‘The orchids of the fungus world’.


Climate change is on the march here, as it is across Britain, Gary notes. “It was usual for twelve to fourteen inches of snow to fall here in winter. Now we have milder, wetter weather ‐ averaging thirty‐five inches of rain


Grey squirrels are an issue at certain levels. They like Hornbeam and strip off chunks of the bark. Badgers gain access too. The SAS of the animal kingdom; they always find a way in


86 I PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2018 ”


annually ‐ and are rarely in drought as water percolates down from the moor. A thick layer of moss has built up over the years and it retains moisture very well. The North now sees slightly hotter but wetter summers.” Where possible, the estate harvests rainfall, the Lyme rangers storing it in large units for watering the nursery as well as the Highland breeds of sheep and cattle introduced to break down the tough moorland grass and help natural heathland and heathers thrive.


Lyme green


Everything is run along ‘green’ lines where possible, Gary stresses. He uses biological predation to control white fly in the Orangery. “Encarsia formosa wasps do the trick in here and in the lower garden,” he adds.


Amongst the exotic species thriving in the heat generated by the biomass boiler that fuels both house and estate is Sparrmannia africana in the Tiliaceae family. Also known as the African hemp or house lime, it sprouts rapidly and is a native to open woodland throughout Africa, South Africa and


Madagascar.


“White fly feed on the sap and their droppings encourage fungal growth, creating unsightly, if harmless, sooting.” He rummages among the two camellias clinging to the Orangery wall to show me the packets of micro‐sized wasps fixed to their branches. “These two specimens are at least 165 years old and are a wall of red in the spring flowering season.”


The original Orangery, introduced by Lewis Wyatt in the early 1800s (as well as nearby Trust property Tatton Park), was left uncompleted ‐ Alfred Darbyshire adding the colourful Minton mosaic tile floor and glass roof decades later.


“Although slugs live in the ivy bedding spread through the gardens, we don’t have a huge problem, but grey squirrels are an issue at certain levels. They like Hornbeam and strip off chunks of the bark.” Badgers gain access too. “The SAS of the animal kingdom,” says Gary. “They always find a way in.” Lyme’s ornithological group manages feeding areas for smaller species, but the larger birds can cause headaches. “Canada


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