We appreciate and value wildlife in gardens, and, of course, gardens are becoming increasingly important places for wildlife. This is a project about people and wildlife and gardens.
© NTPL / Ian Shaw
Introduction:
The wildlife in gardens project has two main aims:
- To engage visitors, and visiting naturalists, in exploring and celebrating the wildlife in the Trust’s gardens.
- To provide information on wildlife in the Trust’s formal gardens to visitors and researchers.
Recording wildlife in the gardens:
Although the National Trust surveys all its countryside properties for wildlife, few wildlife surveys have taken place within the Trust’s formal gardens, due to capacity issues. The National Trust does not really have the resources to generate the massive surveys that are required in its gardens, or the capacity to process the results.
How you can help:
We are encouraging visiting naturalists to record interesting wildlife that they see in Trust gardens and forward the information to an email address, based in The National Trust's head office, in Swindon. We are looking, in particular, for:
- Records of scarce species for which the garden is likely to be fulfilling an important role.
- Species and habitat features.
- The weird and wonderful!
What happens to your email:
The email address for your exciting observations is: gardenswildlifesurvey@nationaltrust.org.uk
- On submitting records to the email address you will receive an auto reply acknowledging receipt - we may get back to you - especially if you've found something significant.
- The information will be collated by volunteers, and fed into our wildlife database.
- The information will then be forwarded to national and county species recording schemes.
- We will of course also inform the garden - they certainly need to know!
This is a long-term, open-ended study. Results are likely to be conveyed through these Wildlife in Gardens pages, via The National Trust Magazine and through the media and specialist magazines.
Volunteers:
The venture really does depend on volunteers! We need help not only in conducting the survey, but also processing the results. If you are interested in getting involved -please do contact us. Volunteers could process data either in the Trust’s new head office in Swindon or at home, through their own computers.
Guide to the regions:
Here is a region-by-region guide to what we know we have living in the National Trust's gardens.
Search for the hidden kingdom:
Autumn 2007 sees the launch of a public survey of waxcap grasslands on National Trust properties. Whilst these colourful mushrooms are often found on remote upland hillsides or parkland, some of the rarest species can be discovered on closely manicured lawns in formal gardens. Along with spectacular earth-tongues, coral and club fungi, the waxcaps care not whether the grass is nibbled by a sheep or trimmed by lawnmower.
The 'small print':
- Although we would love to enter into email correspondence with you, our systems wouldn't be able to cope with the volume of traffic!
- We regret that we are not able to handle written correspondence at this stage.
- We cannot currently accept large attachments such as jpegs. If you have something of interest, we would advise that you mention it in your email, and we can contact you about it.
- Sadly we cannot help with identification, again due to capacity, so please don't email pictures for identification.
Note:
The Trust's formal gardens are managed as Gardens, not as nature reserves - though obviously we try to accommodate wildlife as much as is possible within the parameters of gardens and gardening.
The term 'Garden' can be hard to define! This study is confined the National Trust historic gardens that are open regularly to the public. We are excluding parks, but pleasure grounds are a grey area. We are happy to include the core areas of the likes of Clumber, Stourhead and Stowe, but are omitting open parks and the less flowery pleasure grounds such as Croome.
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