Wild about Meadows

This year we’ve gone wild about meadows in many places across the District including Arleston Park, Omagh, by letting the grass and wildflowers flourish into the summer months.   By simply changing our cutting regime in key areas across FODC estate, the wildflowers and range of grasses can flower and go to seed, providing valuable food and habitat for many species.

Earlier this spring orange tip butterflies danced aplenty as they flitted around the cuckoo flower.  Visit this month and you could see birds, such as the bullfinch, feeding on the grass seeds, or swallows as they swoop across the meadow picking up insects as they go! And not forgetting the bees and pollinators too; they’ve benefited from the dandelions in early spring when there was little else available.

Keep an eye out too for our ‘Don’t Cut Yet’ signs on roadside verges across the district, where we continue to work in partnership with Transport NI to allow wildflower corridors to thrive. This is the legacy of the excellent ‘Save Our Magnificent Meadows’ project led in Northern Ireland by Ulster Wildlife a few years ago.  It was the starting point of changing our way of managing spaces for pollinators, much like the ‘Don’t Mow, Let it Grow’ initiative in the Causeway Coast and Glens District.

For more information on our meadow management or if you know of a great patch of native wildflowers on public land, email biodiversity@fermanaghomagh.com