Wolseley Habitats

Ponds and Lakes

Originally created as a 'Florida Everglades' style garden in the 1990s, today the boardwalk circling Stephen's Pond is a great wetland pool supporting many species.  Ponds are vital wetland habitats that support a huge diversity of life including many
threatened freshwater species such as Natterjack Toad, Great Crested Newt and Medicinal Leech. For some species, ponds are becoming a last refuge.

There are at least 4,000 species of freshwater invertebrates in the UK, two thirds of which can live in ponds. A good pond might have over 100 of the larger invertebrate species (like beetles, dragonflies, snails and caddis flies).

All our native British amphibians - frogs, toads and newts - are pond specialists, and use these small waterbodies as their main breeding habitat.

Most of Britain's larger wetland plants can be found in ponds, and some of the rarest depend more or less exclusively on them. A good pond can support at least twenty-five wetland plant species and exceptional sites may have up to fifty.

A pond without a population of fish is likely to contain a diversity of invertebrates and creatures (amphibians for example) that may not occur in a similar pond with a significant number of fish.

Ponds can be an important habitat for wetland mammals and birds too. They are increasingly providing a valuable refuge for water voles since mink have spread to many rivers and streams.

Hay Meadow

The area of Wolseley called Park Bank is managed as a Hay Meadow, this means that it is cut once a year for hay, this is the traditional way of managing it and it encourages the wildlfowers that grow there.

Where have all the wildlfowers gone?

In Britain more than 95% of our wildlfower meadows had disappeared by 1984. This decline is still continuing. Until the mid 1980's the farming community was encouraged to increase food production, and farmers were given financial incentives to farm land intensively. Traditional methods of farming became uneconomical, resulting in the destruction of many hay meadows

Ploughing up grasslands to make way for arable crops, or fertilizing them to produce dairy pasture will destroy them as habitats. However, wihdrawing a grassland from the agricultural system is just as bad. Grassland animal and plant communities have developed alongside agriculture for centuries, and farming practices have influenced the character of the grassland. Hay is traditionally cut in late June or July, this is how we manage the meadow at The Wolseley Centre, the flowers have time to set their seed before the crop is removed.

If the hay crop is not cut then the meadow will gradually be invaded by shrubs and trees and the sun-loving flowers will dissapear. Therefore, careful and traditional management is needed to sustain a wildflower meadow. Our meadow is cut for us by a local farmer who takes the hay away to feed his cattle with.

Orchard

Apples originated in the Middle East more than 4000 years ago fruit and vines have been grown in the UK since the Roman occupation, with specially cultivated apple varieties spreading across Europe to France, arriving in England at around the time of the Norman conquest in 1066.  Henry VIII established the first large scale orchards at Teynham, Kent. He instructed his fruiterer,Richard Harris, to scour the known world for the best varieties!

Victorian explorers found new varieties from all over the world and brought them to Brogdale, in Kent, so developing its orchards and gardens. Brogdale now houses the National Fruit Collection - more than 4000 varieties - with over 30 acres of orchards, and the largest collection of apple varieties in the world (more than 2100 dessert, culinary and cider)

The small orchard we have planted at The Wolseley Centre is home to 34 different varieties of fruit tree, we have tried to find historic varieties from the local area wherever possible.

Limestone Grassland and Heathland

We have many different examples of habitats at Wolseley, one that we have created is a small area of limestone habitat. We have made this opposite a small area of heathland and acidic habitat. Limestone is calcareous and is chemically the opposite to the sandstone in the heathland. You wouldn't normally find these two habitats so close together but ours has been made like this to show the difference in plant life that grows over different rocks.

The limestone habitat was built by the volunteers who help manage the Wolseley Centre, it consists of crushed limestone (hardcore) and limestone blocks, some of these have fossils in, see if you can find any next time you visit!

The area has been planted with typical limestone wildflowers and seeded with grasses that you'd normally find growing amongst them. Summer is the best time to see the plants in flower.

One of the important and scarce habitats we have in Staffordshire is heathland. At the Wolseley Centre we have tried to create a small example of heathland to show visitors the different vegetation that can be found there. Heathland only develops on acidic soil, the plants that you expect to find growing include heather, bilberry, cowberry and grasses like wavy hair grass. These plants are adapted to the acidic conditions and will thrive where others would fail. A good heathland will consist of a matrix of areas of these different plants.

The very small area we have at Wolseley is just to give you a glimpse of places like Cannock Chase, the heathland of Cannock Chase is now protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) such is its importance for nature conservation. We have created our mini heathland opposite our small area of limestone habitat, this is to show the contrast in the vegetation on the two areas, you wouldn't normally find these two habitats in the same location

Wetlands

Reedbeds are wetlands dominated by stands of the common reed Phragmites australis. The water table in a reedbed is at or above ground level for most of the year. They tend to incorporate areas of open water and ditches, and small areas of wet grassland and sometimes an area of wet woodland may be associated with them.

There are now only about 5000 hectares of reedbeds in the UK, but of the 900 or so sites contributing to this total, only about 50 are greater than 20 hectares, and these make a large contribution to the total area. A larger area has more chance of sustaining wildlife.

Although reedbeds are widely distributed, they are by no means common. Intensive drainage and the decline of traditional management, caused by many things, led to an estimated loss of between 10 and 40 per cent of the UK reedbeds between 1945 and 1990.

These habitats are few and far between in Great Britain now due to our ever-growing population. They are one of the UK's most threatened habitats in fact around ninety-seven percent of meadows have been lost since the late 1940's. This has resulted in loss of 'microhabitats', which are small, specialized areas such as a clump of grass or an underground burrow, and in turn species numbers have declined. Many areas of wet meadow or wet grassland have been drained to allow modern intensive farming to take place, and some areas have been drained so they can be built on.

Some may be periodically saturated usually in the winter months or it may be a permanently wet habitat where the water level is generally at or just below the surface. They are often low-lying areas with poor drainage, which have networks of drainage canals that often support diverse aquatic flora and faunas. All wetlands require some degree of management to prevent them drying out and developing as scrub. We have added a series of ditches and shallow pools, known as scrapes to our meadow to help encourage the wildlife that lives there.

Woodlands

Woodlands are a special feature of our landscape. They are also important reservoirs of wildlife, it is possible for a large woodland to contain up to 5000 different species of plants and animals. In prehistoric times woodland covered most of the landscape, today, however, less than 10% of Britain is covered in woodland.

The small area of woodland we have at Wolseley is one of the first habitats you will see as you arrive at the site. This area is a section of the site that was landscaped and planted several years ago as part of Wolseley Garden Park. Our long term aim for this area is to create a woodland containing species that you would expect to find in a native woodland in this region.