Spring

Spring 2019 was an amazing year for displays of our native bluebells, when cold winds kept temperatures down for a while longer than in recent years.

Sadly though, the Woodland Trust’s ‘Nature’s Calendar’ monitoring (the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, in relation to climate and plant and animal life), with over 200,000 records between 1998-2014, including from sites across Cumbria, is showing that trees are budding and leafing earlier with increasing temperatures (3-6 days in the north for every 1 degree C temperature rise).

Some of our native plants including the bluebells may suffer as the woodland canopy closes earlier, blocking out the light before they can flower and reproduce.