Latest news with #Breck
Ottawa Citizen
06-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- Ottawa Citizen
The city gardener: For instant colour, just add annuals
At the risk of sounding immodest, springtime is when my garden looks its very best (partly due to years of over-ordering from the Breck's bulb catalogue, and planting way too many bulbs each fall). Starting with snowdrops and crocuses in late March, followed by sequential waves of daffodils and tulips, and ending with giant red Emperor tulips that last through to late June, my front garden in particular looks pretty darn good, if I say so myself. Article content Article content Article content However, a garden that depends on bulbs alone for spring colour faces two drawbacks. One is that even if you plant a wide variety of types, each bloom only lasts for a week or two before fading, leaving conspicuous bare spots. The other is that after the bulb parade ends, you have to put up with dying leaves for the next two or three months if you want to ensure another show-stopping performance next year. Article content The solution is annuals, and you can start planting them as early as mid-April, if the ground is thawed enough. (That rule about never planting anything before Victoria Day is a myth.) Many garden plants we call 'annuals' in Canada are actually perennials in their native lands, so they can put up with a light frost. If there's hard frost in the forecast though, you might want to cover them with a bedsheet or a sheet of plastic and hope for the best. Article content Pansies Article content You'd have to be pretty hard-hearted not to love pansies. This pretty little plant comes in yellow, violet-blue, white or a combination of any of these, with or without black 'faces.' They're a great way to add instant colour to window boxes, urns, or the fronts of flowerbeds. I usually buy a whole flat around mid- to late April, and plant them in clumps all through the garden. I plant them about four to six inches apart, which is closer than the experts advise, but it gives you a real show once they start filling in. Article content Article content For the most prolific flowering, plant pansies in full sun and keep them evenly moist. Keep your secateurs (or your fingernails) handy and deadhead them regularly, as often as daily, and they'll reward you with sheets of bloom right through to mid-summer. Article content Also called 'Persian Buttercup' (a misnomer, since they look nothing like buttercups and come from Asia and the Mediterranean, not Persia), ranunculus features thick, almost spherical multi-petalled blooms and comes in a rainbow of colours, sometimes with dark centres. If they like where you planted them — full sun and evenly moist soil — they'll bloom non-stop for up to six weeks.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scrambled eggs are back on the menu for Norfolk Wildlife Trust
The gluing of rare 'scrambled egg' lichen to the ground is my kind of conservation, says Norfolk Wildlife Trust reserves officer Robert Morgan Lichen is a topic that's not usually covered in the news. So, for those unversed in the subject, lichen are those weird crusty growths on churchyard headstones, old trees, roof tiles or, in the case of mine, the bodywork of a dilapidated car. Lichens have fascinating biology and are important indicators of environmental health, particularly airborne pollution, so much so, the vulnerability of some species has driven them to national extinction. Scrambled egg lichen, Fulgensia fulgens (Image: However, a recent collaborative project has seen the introduction of one of these 'lost' species to Norfolk. To find out more (as BBC 'Countryfile' presenters say) I travelled to Norfolk Wildlife Trust's Weeting Heath to meet the reserve's warden, James Symonds. After following James across the Hockwold Road, and then a vault over a low stile, I found myself in a large field of close-cropped vegetation, sandy soil, and in places, bare stony ground. Most people driving past wouldn't pay it much attention – just an ordinary field. But it's far from that! Jon Cripps CWT collecting scambled egg lichen (Image: Plantlife) This patch of impoverished looking terrain stands as a relic of a unique and strange landscape. But it's a postage stamp compared to the vast steppe-like wilderness that was once the Norfolk and Suffolk Brecklands. Originally covering 370 square miles, the Brecklands, up until the turn of the 20th century, was characterised by huge tracts of open ground. The word 'breck' was used to describe the 'broken' land of heath, scattered scrub and sparse grassland. The light sandy soil would often result in sandstorms, with even dune systems forming. Some species of lichen will grow in odd places, even on old cars (Image: The Brecklands were cleared of trees as far back as Neolithic times and were continually farmed until the soil was exhausted. Rabbit warrening and sheep farming became the only viable agriculture, and this developed and maintained the landscape over the following centuries. It supported a range of unusual wildlife too, with some species thriving in this Mediterranean-style habitat, but nowhere else in the UK. The last hundred years has seen the Brecks all but disappear under intensive forestry, with the rest giving way to modern fertilized and irrigated agriculture. NWT owns and manages some of the remnants of this landscape, and James works hard at Weeting Heath to maintain his patch. He explained that 'mild winters, wetter summers and the human-induced increase in atmospheric nitrogen means grass grows quicker and thicker, and this crowds-out specialised habitat specific species, particularly some of the Breck lichens that need bare or thinly vegetated ground'. The collapse of the Breckland rabbit population, due to disease, has exacerbated the problem further. To address this, James rotavates the topsoil on selected plots, this is supported by grazing ponies and sheep to keep the vegetation short over the remaining areas. Many rare plant and invertebrate species benefit, and most notable to birdwatchers, the stone curlew does very well here. James led me to a piece of undulating ground that comprised of a sequence of ridges and furrows. It looked like a huge square of corrugated sheeting buried just beneath the sandy soil. Known as the 'washboard' it was created nearly twenty years ago as a refuge for several rare lichen species. Since the 1970s three species of Breckland lichen have become locally extinct, with two of these disappearing from the UK entirely. The Scaly Brecks Lichen continues to be recorded across southern Europe, but the Starry Brecks Lichen is now eye-wateringly rare, with it being known from only a handful of sites in Norway. The Scrambled Egg Lichen, also lost from the Brecks, is still found in reasonable numbers, on a coastal dune system in Cornwall. For this reason, the species was selected as the best candidate for a translocation project to Weeting Heath's 'washboard'. In recent times many species have been given catchy monikers – an attempt to make them more familiar, rather than carrying the obscurity of a long unpronounceable scientific name. Unsurprisingly, this lichen, as its common name suggests, is creamy-yellow in colour and crumbly in appearance. Led by the conservation organisation Plantlife, with funding from Natural England, the project forms part of a wider scheme to increase the biodiversity of the Brecks. James travelled to Cornwall and met with Plantlife's senior lichen specialist Dave Lamacraft, and Jon Cripps from Cornwall Wildlife Trust, the Ranger for the donor site, Penhale Dunes. The team carefully removed small patches of the lichen – about the size of a 20p piece. Once back at Weeting, 160 were transplanted onto the washboard. Taking advice from previous successful transplants, half the lichens were stuck down with book binding glue! The rest were set in wet soil. Walking with our heads down and eyes firmly on the ground, James showed me the marked ranks of his new wards. He explained that 'although the scrambled egg lichen is a striking species and nice to have back, it is an important part of the biological soil crust community and helps stabilize a fragile ecosystem'. James smiled and continued: 'in addition we unintentionally brought along a globally rare tiny parasitic fungus that the lichen hosts, so we effectively got two rarities for the price of one.' Lichen growing on an old gravestone (Image: Despite having over 1,800 species in the UK, lichen, not surprisingly, are often overlooked. It's probably true to say that even some natural historians give them little regard, me included. But James's enthusiasm has sparked a new interest, it was a real joy and inspiration to talk to such a knowledgeable and dedicated naturalist. But they are fascinating, in fact lichen are not a single organism, but a stable symbiotic association (a mutually beneficial relationship) between a fungus and algae, or sometimes cyanobacteria; occasionally it can be both. Although James considers it less symbiotic and more slavery, 'the algae is trapped in the fungus cells for the purpose of photosynthesis, and to provide the fungus with sugars, but with, it seems, nothing in return'. Lichen were one of the first multi-cellular lifeforms on dry land, and their ability to absorb nutrients from the air, break down rock and entrap the earliest forms of cyanobacteria, led to the formation of the first soil on earth. This allowed the evolution of complex terrestrial plants and, eventually, us too. It seems to me, we owe them!
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Residents clean up thousands of dead geese on Lake Byron
LAKE BYRON, S.D. (KELO) — Thousands of dead geese have washed up along the shores of Lake Byron, just north of Huron. Lake Byron can be a hub for snow geese. 'Most of the time, at this time of year, this place will become completely white with geese,' longtime Lake Byron resident Denis Drake said. Cimpl halts harvest operations in Yankton But this year, thousands of geese have turned up dead throughout the lake. 'We had such a mild winter, no snow, so a lot of the geese stayed up to about Christmas, and usually, they're gone by Thanksgiving. They just really started to get the bird flu. We didn't think we had near the problem until the ice started to thaw out, and that's when we really realized how many we had,' Lake Byron resident Patrick Breck said. So people have had to work together to clean up the lake. This is the third year they've had this problem, but this year has been the worst by far. 'It's just gotten really, really bad this year,' Drake said. 'So far, we've picked up in six different groups about 20,000,' Breck said. 'They don't dissolve very fast, and if you go swimming or something, you get one of them wrapped around, it's just not good,' Drake said. But community members have been doing everything they can to get the lake back to normal. 'We've got a neat community out here where we all get together and help each other out,' Drake said. 'People want to take care of their properties on the lake, and there's a lot they take a lot of pride in out here,' Breck said. The geese are being buried nearby on land owned by South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New homes plan as city sells land to boost coffers
Two sites which were on the market for a total of £800,000 have been sold to a housing developer as part of Bradford Council's attempts to plug its budget gap. Breck Homes has completed the unconditional purchase of the plots which sit either side of Bowling Pool and yards from Bolling Hall Museum in East Bowling. Details of how much they were sold for have not been revealed but each plot, which is within walking distance of Bowling Park, was listed by estate agents Mark Brearley & Co with a £400,000 asking price. The developer has yet to submit a planning application but proposes turning the former car park into 20 affordable homes and the former council office site into another 32 houses. A spokesperson for the developer said the schemes would include a combination of shared ownership properties and homes for affordable rent. Construction work was set to start in mid-2026 subject to planning approval, they said. Planning applications are expected to be lodged with the council in the coming weeks. Residents will then be asked for their views and comments on each development as part of the planning process before a final decision is made. One plot of land is a former car park on Flockton Road. The other is vacant land on Brompton Avenue that was once home to a council office building and, before that, the Bolling School for Girls. Last year the two plots were included in a list of more than 150 assets Bradford Council planned to sell off in a bid to balance its books. Andy Garnett, a director of the Lancashire-based Breck, said: "West Yorkshire has ambitious plans to deliver 38,000 new homes over the next 15 years to meet its growing need. "The redevelopment of brownfield sites for affordable homes is an important part of this strategy and is also a key part of Breck's approach to development." Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.
BBC News
14-02-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Bradford Council sells sites near park for homes
Two sites which were on the market for a total of £800,000 have been sold to a housing developer as part of Bradford Council's attempts to plug its budget Homes has completed the unconditional purchase of the plots which sit either side of Bowling Pool and yards from Bolling Hall Museum in East of how much they were sold for have not been revealed but each plot, which is within walking distance of Bowling Park, was listed by estate agents Mark Brearley & Co with a £400,000 asking developer has yet to submit a planning application but proposes turning the former car park into 20 affordable homes and the former council office site into another 32 houses. A spokesperson for the developer said the schemes would include a combination of shared ownership properties and homes for affordable work was set to start in mid-2026 subject to planning approval, they applications are expected to be lodged with the council in the coming will then be asked for their views and comments on each development as part of the planning process before a final decision is plot of land is a former car park on Flockton other is vacant land on Brompton Avenue that was once home to a council office building and, before that, the Bolling School for Girls. Last year the two plots were included in a list of more than 150 assets Bradford Council planned to sell off in a bid to balance its Garnett, a director of the Lancashire-based Breck, said: "West Yorkshire has ambitious plans to deliver 38,000 new homes over the next 15 years to meet its growing need."The redevelopment of brownfield sites for affordable homes is an important part of this strategy and is also a key part of Breck's approach to development."Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.
