Supporting nature’s recovery across South Warwickshire
A dry February 2026 morning and a dozen volunteers turned up at Cornmill Meadows, Shipston’s wildlife site, to lightly prune and cut out suckers in the community orchard planted 2 years ago.
A mixture of heritage trees were planted including plums, gages, apples, pears and damsons, 54 in total. We hope to harvest some fruit this year for the first time.
Shipston is very fortunate to have its own designated Local Wildlife Site. Cornmill Meadows is owned and managed by Shipston Town Council with the help of Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and a team of local volunteers.
As soon as they took on Cornmill Meadows, the management group were encouraged to include ‘more water’. A team from the Severn Rivers Trust dug out a scrape in the lower meadow at the end of 2025 (at no cost to the group) and created a butterfly bank with the soil that was removed. The site obviously looks very bare at the moment, but the group will plant it up as soon as they can and, hopefully, within a year it should look a lot more established.
