to Carmarthenshire Meadows Group (CMG) – Grŵp Dolydd Sir Gaerfyrddin
This group exists for the benefit of both landowners and land managers, and also for species-rich grasslands and the wildlife that depends on them. We hope to help those who are concerned about biodiversity loss to conserve or enhance existing biodiversity-friendly sites, and create new ones.
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This is a static front page, so please look at the Blog Posts and other pages, for the latest news of what’s going on.
We have plans to upgrade and refresh this website – but that is going to have to wait. We want the website to be bilingual – but we are all volunteers and none of us on the steering committee are first language Welsh. If any members can help us out with translation, please let us know.
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Please see the separate CMG membership page to see how you can become a member, and the events page for current CMG events.
Carmarthenshire Meadows Group - Grŵp Dolydd Sir Gaerfyrddin 
Really lovely website which captures the essence of those meadows. Makes me want to go meadowing.
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Thanks for the kind comment, If it makes you go want to go meadowing….brilliant.
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This is such a wonderful website, and I love the ‘meadowing’ section. Thank you for setting it up Julian.
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Thanks for the kind comment. It was very much a collaborative effort, and hopefully with time will become even more interesting.
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Hi Julian. Thank you for developing this informative website. We planted up a woodland on our property last year and are already benefitting from a significant increase in wildflowers and insects particularly butterflies, dragonflies etc. We would like to develop a wildflower meadow but at present, we have cattle and sheep on the fields – not ours’ so, once this is sorted, we’ll be onto it. We’re novices and are excited at the prospect of effecting a change in the biodiversity around us simply by allowing nature to do her stuff! Will look out for events here and have already pencilled in the Meadows Group Meeting on October 24th.
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Hello Barry and Annette. Thanks for the comment. Sounds like you’re beginning an exciting journey, like us. So much to learn and think about. Maybe will meet up in October. Best wishes, Julian
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Great website, really informative and inspiring. I wanted to leave a quick post to share my exciting news….we have our first orchid in our field! I wanted to upload some photos, but I’ve not figured out how to do it, is there a way I could upload some photos on here?
We have a 6 acre field near Carmarthen, and it was previously managed as a silage field. After only the second year of no fertilizer, and a once-yearly hay cut in August, we have seen a big difference already, and have quite a wide variety of species.
My version of “meadowing” is wondering around the field every evening, checking on our lone (so far) orchid, enjoying the variety of invertebrates darting around, and avoiding all the chores I should be doing!
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Hello Hilary,
Thanks for the comment.
If you send me any pics of your meadow and what you want to say, I’ll put them up on a post. I’m really keen to get more pieces like this from anyone – I feel very strongly that the website should be able to share this sort of information from around the county.
If you send them to me at grumpyhobbit@gmail.com, they should arrive OK. If possible could you reduce any images sizes before sending to about 150 KBs, or say 850 pixels maximum size in 1 direction? If you can’t reduce the sizes pre sending, I can do it, but we have limited satellite data allowances, so normal pics of say 2 – 3 MBs, take ages to download, and I have to reduce them anyway to get them on WordPress, or they then take ages for anyone else to look at.
Any probs, with this, just email me, or leave another comment,
best wishes
Julian
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Hi there. My husband and I have recently moved to the outskirts of Meidrim where we are renovating a cottage. We have a 3 acre field that we would like to create a wildflower meadow on but are complete novices so we’re really glad to have found this site. Please let us know when the next meeting is so we can attend. In the meantime we have recently borrowed some sheep from a nearby farmer to graze the land as it hasn’t been touched all summer. We are worried we might have too many weeds, in particular creeping buttercup, so we would be very interested in a site visit and any advice as to what our next course of action should be. Jo and Jon.
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Hello Jo and Jon,
Thanks for the comment and queries. It’s an exciting prospect… Firstly they’re probably won’t be another group meeting now until the spring. If you keep watching the blog posts, you’ll be in the loop – we’re hoping to develop a membership structure by next spring – you may realise if you’ve glanced through the webpages, that the “group” is really still in its infancy – a bit like your meadow, but there are several other meadow owners just starting out on a similar journey to yours, as well as some with fantastic established meadows. Hidden around on the web pages/posts, there are actually some very good links, and ideas you can follow up. There are local ecologists who could site visit and give advice, but also maybe emailing/contacting some of the meadow owners who are already involved would probably be really helpful – the meadow gallery ( again early stages) has one or 2 suggestions. It also depends a little on what your long term aim is, and what the land is like. But at this time of the year, assuming it isn’t very wet land, winter grazing with sheep to get the grass down is a pretty good approach. But maybe aim to get them off by mid February, or before if it’s a wet winter and the ground is getting muddy. And don’t put any fertiliser or muck on. ( probably ever!), if floral diversity is your main aim. The spring meeting would then be a good occasion to meet and chat with a few more folk,
Hope this is helpful, and do get in touch again ,
best wishes
Julian.
PS Although it’s a bit heavy going in places, ( and pricey!) George Peterken’s book would make a great Christmas present, and certainly give you lots of ideas and inspiration and be a valuable resource/reference in years to come.
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Thanks for replying Julian and for the useful advice. We have the sheep until Christmas so that’s probably good timing. We have also contacted one of the ecologists on this site and will definitely want to attend the next meeting. Happy to pay a membership fee and join if that’s the way the group decides to proceed. 🙂
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Thanks Jo, we have a planning meeting this Saturday for a steering group, so I’ll do an update on the blog posts page of what happens – which will hopefully include details of membership, etc. If you click on the follow button on the blog posts page, you should then automatically receive any news, etc. related to the group, as soon as it gets published.
best wishes
Julian
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Hi
I’m unable to attend the meeting this Saturday but would like to join up. I’m especially interested in the information regarding the soft rush. Would I be able to access any information following joining?
Regards
Jacky
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Hello Jacky,
Thanks for the comment.
If you look at the separate membership page, then hopefully after Saturday’s meeting, there should be details there of how you can take out annual membership of the group.
Unfortunately there’s an element of Catch 22 with getting a new group like this off the ground with a proper membership – you can’t open bank accounts, etc. until you have officers and an idea of a constitution, and these only got thrashed out last weekend after much discussion and preparation.. I know that Colin, the Treasurer, is currently hoping to have this option for membership being taken out on line sorted out very soon.
With regards to soft rush, I’ve made the film, which I’m showing on Saturday. It’s really a case study of what we’ve achieved here, and maybe will give folk some useful ideas, rather than being the prescriptive answer. I’ve burned a few DVDs of it today, and again after the showing on Saturday, there may well be an option to hire or buy one of these…but it might be worth waiting until then so that I can assess what the responses from the audience are, as to its merits!
So perhaps I might respond to you again sometime after next weekend if that’s OK?
Best wishes
Julian
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I was given your e-mail address by Monmouthshire meadows.org. I have a 2 acre (approx.) meadow. It has been a meadow for over 20 years mostly left to itself and cut once and year (July/August) by a neighbour farmer. I would be interested to know what plants/grasses I have in the meadow and understand that you can send someone to check this out. I know a few of the
plants – yellow rattle, knapweed, red clover.
I live in Bryngwyn near Newcastle Emlyn. Is this too far away?
Look forward to hearing from you.
Anne Brown
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Hello Anne,
Thanks for the comment. A few suggestions which might be helpful – unlike MMG we can’t currently guarantee someone can turn out to do a survey, but there’s a list of locally based ecologists who might be able to help. ( See the ecological surveys web page). In addition there’s an upcoming course at Denmark farm near Lampeter on Thursday June 8th, organised by Plantlife to help meadow owners with doing their own surveys. ( See events page for more). Finally have you thought of joining CMG? It only costs £10, and if you were a member, and could make the next meadow walk at Cwmdu – again see events page – you’d meet Richard and Kath Pryce, who are the county’s botanical recorders, and very interested to visit any member’s meadows to do botanical surveys ( they did one at our place last August, which I wrote about on the blog – sadly this is only restricted to CMG members, and they are very busy people, so you’d have to see if/when they were able to do this.
Hope all this is of help, and that maybe we’ll meet up sometime in the future,
best wishes
Julian
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Hello again Anne,
I just realise that if you actually live in Ceredigion, then you’ll have different county botanical recorders to Richard and Kath Pryce, so would need to find out who they are on line, and contact them separately. You could still join CMG though! We have a few members just over the border!
best wishes
Julian
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please could you email me the Meadow species list
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