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When garden designer Arne Maynard and his partner William Collinson acquired their Monmouthshire home, Allt y bela, from the Spitalfields Trust in 2008, with it came a 4-acre plot that circled the medieval house. It was enough space to create a jewel-box garden studded with clipped yew and beech topiary, exquisite borders, an ornamental kitchen garden and swaths of meadows that were gently and patiently coaxed back from scrubland.
But the 15th-century house, which sits in a deep basin with pasture and woodland rising up around it, had originally been part of a much larger estate of 160 acres. In 2022 this “lost” land — the largest single Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Wales — became available to buy. “It always felt like we were connected to the landscape,” says Maynard. “But bringing the land back in ownership with the house — all of a sudden, the house had a completely different feel and a different purpose. It was like a divorce that we reunited.”
The land had been largely unmanaged, which meant an enormous variety of wild flowers had flourished — but so too had pernicious weeds. “Most of the land was covered with brambles and bracken, some of it to chest height,” explains Collinson, who first had to repeatedly flail the land to clear it, a process they had already carried out on the wild-flower meadows. “The pastures regenerated quickly, and the bank of wild flowers in those areas which we’ve uncovered has been fantastic. We have huge quantities of orchids. They’re just everywhere. You can’t step on to the pastures without standing on an orchid.”
Part of the management plan set out by Natural Resources Wales — who oversee the SSSI designation — was that the land should be grazed properly, and that provided Collinson with the opportunity to realise a long-held dream. He’s descended from a long line of farmers — his maternal ancestors had farmed a block of land on the Salisbury levels since the Doomsday.
They acquired a small herd of White Park cattle in 2022. It’s an ancient breed — its distinctive head, with long elegant horns, has been the logo of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust since its inception in 1973, when there were only around 65 breeding females of White Park left; there are around 750 today. It’s widely considered to be the most ancient British breed, descended from the country’s original wild white cattle and prized for its hardy nature. For the novice farmer, this was a key consideration, since the herd can happily live outside year round.
But the White Park is also valued for its excellent foraging abilities and gentle grazing, making it the perfect breed for coaxing back the land, clearing overgrown patches and opening it up in “a completely natural way”. Once the process of clearing patches begins, the cows then go in and forage to fully clear it, exposing the soil and, at the same time, exposing the seed bank, allowing native wild flowers to grow and kick-starting a regenerative cycle.
“It’s fantastic to see how the land is improving, to see how the land has become different during the period of our ownership. You can see quite clearly how our pasture is different,” says Maynard. The grasses on their land are all native, in contrast with modern hybrid grasses used on many nearby farms. “Pastures owned by farmers who farm more intensively and fertilise look completely different. Ours feels medieval.”
As well as a sea of orchids, including the common spotted orchid and southern marsh orchid, the land is now rich with wild flowers including cardamine, knapweed, cranesbills, yarrow, vetch, buttercups, sorrel and betony. Abundant birdlife has followed, including nightingales in summer.
The White Park herd roams between pasture and woodland, allowing it to self-medicate with herbs and wild flowers, and to eat bark from hazel and fruit trees. “In the old days, farmers used to cut green branches to feed the cattle and they would graze off all the lower leaves,” says Maynard. “They might kill off the young bark of hazel, but there’s this whole ecosystem that starts to happen.”
Conservation grazing has grown substantially over the past 15 to 20 years says Christopher Price, chief executive of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. In the charity’s latest watchlist rare breeds including Dartmoor sheep, New Forest ponies, saddleback pigs and native goat breeds are among those increasing in number. It’s a welcome return. “The landscapes and habitats that we cherish were largely created by wild or semi-feral grazing animals,” says Price.
Maynard and Collinson currently have 13 cows. Caring for the herd has, says Collinson, been a daily adventure, everything from dealing with the grisly fallout from a broken horn (“shocking in the extreme”) to the awe of the first calves being born last spring. The cows take themselves off to find a hollow or dense copse where they give birth alone, before calling for the rest of the herd, who then form a protective crèche for the new addition.
“Every day I’m learning something new,” he adds. “They are quite docile, quite friendly, but terribly strong. You can rub their noses, and they’ll eat out of your hand. And I know them well, but they’re also wilful. They won’t do what they don’t want to do.”
He’d like to slowly expand the herd to perhaps 15 or 20 in total. “It wouldn’t be enough to make any kind of a living from, but the sense of wellbeing that comes from managing them is fantastic. Something that money can’t buy.”
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