Land Manager's Diary: Read it here>

You'll find more images from the day in our Hedge Planting Facebook Gallery>

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On Tuesday lots of our Friends of the Lake District staff joined us at High Borrowdale to help with the planting of the new 420m hedge. For several new staff this was their first trip onto one of our properties.

The sun shone, the valley was stunning and spirits are high. It is always rewarding to have some of our own staff out on site and share some of the work we have been doing on the ground as all our staff have a role in helping to keep the organisation running and enable us to do our work.

It was also good to be able to explain how our land is another tool in our policy and campaigning toolkit and how useful it is in our policy work. We are testing this out in practice right now with the hedge work and plug planting, funded by the Lake District National Park via the Farming in Protected Landscapes Scheme.

This is a new scheme and it is useful for us to be able to put it into practice and then feedback our experience to Defra. Experience so far shows that the National Park staff have been really helpful and good to deal with over the application, etc. Not so good has been the fact that the deadlines are rigid – for us the end of March, so when something goes wrong, such as our original fencing contractor pulling out and plug plants not surviving the winter, it puts the project at risk. We were so lucky to find Dan of DB Contracts to pick up the work and complete the fence for us.

Also not so good and something we have experienced with every funding scheme is that for some elements, such as the fencing, the grant rates are no where near covering the true cost, especially at the moment when prices are rising almost weekly.

But, the staff cracked on and we have completed the hedge planting. Next job is plug planting hay meadow species. If you would like to join us to do this on Monday March 14th then follow the link and sign up to join our band of brilliant volunteers>