Lavant Environment Team
The Environmental Team, which includes two Tree Wardens, is an initiative by Lavant Parish Council and its purpose is to:
Restore, Conserve and Treasure the diversity
of natural habitat within our parish
and in so doing increase parishioner involvement
We work closely with local professionals/businesses as well as the Lavant Volunteers who do so much work around the village, and we also hope to involve a wide age range of volunteers from within the village.
We have a number of short and medium term objectives which include the development of pollinator corridors and native species hedgerows within the parish in line with advice from environmental specialists from SDNP, CDC, WSCC and other appropriate environmental organisations.
Some recent achievements:
- We have scarified a strip of land on the western boundary of St Nicholas churchyard to encourage regeneration of native species. We were delighted to find the emergence of 50 different varieties of Downland plants attracting a wide variety of insect species.
- We have planted a hedgerow of native species along the eastern boundary fence of the churchyard. Hibernacula have been constructed on two sites, recycling rubble. Plans are in place to encourage regeneration of native species on the northern site of the churchyard.
- We have planted a hedge of native species along the western side of the Recreation Ground (village green) which will eventually grow to replace the decaying post and rails fencing and will provide vital habitat for wildlife as well as flowering plants for pollination.
The latter was achieved through a community effort which we hope to further through building environmental interest and involvement via regular articles in the Lavant News and thus encourage people to become involved in national surveys eg birds, butterflies, etc and to pass their findings for Lavant not just to national organisers but also to the Environment Team so that we can begin recording and regularly updating information about fauna and flora of the parish.
Information about species present in the River Lavant has already been collected and recorded and by working closely with Arundel Wildfowl and Wetlands we hope to investigate the population of the village pond.
We are also beginning to establish a ‘local tree nursery’ – saplings from native species that have self-seeded in our area – to provide a no-cost way of restocking trees & encouraging interest. We hope that individuals will grow saplings in pots at home from acorns, walnuts etc on behalf of the village for use in areas of tree planting/memorial planting.
A longer-term initiative is to establish COMMUNITY ORCHARD PLANTING throughout the village via small clusters of fruit and nut trees which would contribute to the pollination corridor. It is hoped that village volunteers will participate in the upkeep (watering/pruning) of the trees, as well as picking the ripe fruit.
Look out for our articles in the Lavant News.
If you would like to become involved with our various groups please contact us via clerk@lavantparishcouncil.co.uk
