BIOGRAPHICAL ARBORETUM, LITTLE MESOPOTAMI Charity Number: 1185818
Accounts for period 6 April 2023- 5 April 2024
Income
Donations qualifying for Gift Aid T Tuohy £1664 Y Clarkson £200 Gate Income ( for GASDS) £130……£1994 Gift aid repayment £508.14 Rent £500 Total £3002
Expenditure
NFU insurance £925 David Noble hedges £91 Michael Robinson maintenance £ 1138 John Ledgard arborist £500 Stationary £60 Total £2714
BALM REPORT April 6 2023 – April 5 2024
Visitor numbers 26 in 5 guided tours. Cumbria Wildlife Trust principal advertiser.
Private visitors included CWT patron, Lord Inglewood, with Lady Inglewood, who visited in May 2023 and presented an Aesculus seedling from the European Parliament in Brussels.
To celebrate the coronation of King Charles III a Castanea sativa was planted in November 2023.
Meetings with neighbours on other sides of becks to discuss trees. Kris Long across the Red Beck who has attached bird boxes without permission, was informed that these trees are to be felled, Trees along Black Beck reduced at the request of Alex Partington and Alan Jacques. All of these trees had been large sycamores felled 20 years which have regenerated.
Maintenance continued by trustees, with mechanical assistance from local farmers and arborists. After planting over 20 years ago trees need thinning and lifting. Some trees left as standing dead wood for wildlife habitat.
24.1.24 corrected plans of site for hedges sent to Bryce Cumbrian Coastal Woodlands for future hedging which will be delayed until the end of the current tenancy in 2025. The tenant was given notice that the current tenancy will not be renewed, but with an offer of discussing a different tenancy limiting the number of sheep. Too many sheep have compromised the biodiversity of the pastures and part of the public footpath had been made dangerously muddy and unhygienic by too many sheep sheltering behind trees in the winter. The tenant has not yet accepted that the land should be managed for environmental benefit.
Trustees Meeting 16. 1. 2024. Lilian Main attends her first meeting. A conservation architect, she has bought and is restoring a cottage dated 1722, on the opposite bank of the Black Beck facing the Darjeeling plantation. She will in time handle the BALM website currently managed by a former trustee Andrew Barnes.
March, white camellias offered for Easter church decoration.