Kestle Barton Meadow

Beyond the gardens we have our beautiful wild flower meadow. The meadow was created in 2008: A foot of topsoil was removed and a dividing hedge was made with it. Then the land was rotavated, then harrowed, then seeded by hand with a wildflower mix and then harrowed again. Every year in September the meadow grasses are cut, and used as mulch or for seeding elsewhere. The land has not had any chemical input, nor has it been grazed in all this time. There is a sequence of flowers from the spring, when it is dense with cowslips.

The Eden Project has an ongoing study comparing perennial meadows with annual, and the meadow at Kestle Barton is in this study. It is a perennial meadow as no annual supplementary seed is added. Perennial meadows have a longer flowering season, and may support more pollinating insects, including flies, hoverflies, beetles, moths, bees and wasps.

In 2022 Kestle Barton was invited to participate with Wildlife Groundswell in a collaborative event to mark National Meadows Day. The National Meadows Day is now part of our annual calendar and takes place on the first Saturday of July. All are welcome to join in these meadow tours.

Butterflies and Moths at Kestle Barton

The Big Butterfly Count is a UK-wide survey aimed at helping us assess the health of our environment simply by counting the amount and type of butterflies (and some day-flying moths) we see.

Since Kestle Barton opened in 2010 we have tried to raise awareness of the national Big Butterfly Count by printing out the online pdf butterfly identification chart and making it available to visitors with an invitation to take part in the survey.

In 2019 the Cornwall Butterfly and Moth Society first visited Kestle Barton as artist Sarah Gillespie was preparing for her exhibition for the following year. Sarah had stayed at KB a few years earlier to do some moth trapping for her studies on moths. She returned with the support and inspiration of the CBMS members for a late overnight survey in our orchard and meadow. The results of this survey made up the names of all the moths found at KB displayed as an installation in her exhibition, alongside her very fine dry point etchings of moths.

Sarah Gillespie: Moth (12 Sep – 31 Oct 2020) exhibition took place between lock downs in early autumn of 2020, when the CBMS members returned to conduct another survey over the opening weekend. Mark Cocker in conversation with Artists, Sarah Gillespie and Jem Southam, gave a recorded talk on Saturday 12 September 2020 with a social distanced audience comprised primarily of members from the Cornwall Butterfly & Moth Society. This talk is available on our website here. Later that evening, the CBMS traps were put out and another survey began. In the morning an outdoor ‘Moth Magic’ tour was conducted by Mark Cocker around the grounds, and the group congregated in the garden for a review of the fabulous findings of the CBMS efforts from the previous night. (Note: All moths are returned to the wild after a count of the various species is complete).

Events in the meadow

Over the years the wildflower meadow, including the circular space created at the far end, have been the site of many artist-led events and installations, and a few beautiful weddings.

In 2019 Georgia Gendell’s installation of In Other Words, Darling (2019) was situated in the main meadow for the season.

In 2014 Abigail Reynolds collaborated with music director, Gareth Churcher, to create an amazing Summer Solstice piece of specially composed music for the St Keverne brass band to perform in a special arrangement through the wildflowers in the meadow. The event, entitled Double Brass, brought over 300 visitors to our venue to witness this unique, and poignant procession. The piece was repeated the following year, followed by performances of Gareth Churcher’s compositions in the gardens. Including Troheaul, (written for Double Brass) and an experimental piece referencing Dean Quarry.

The Circular Space

A circular space was created in 2008 with the topsoil that was removed from the meadow to create hedgerows around the orchard. This is an open-use space with no specific purpose, and has been the inspiration for many installations and activities over the years.

In 2024 fibre artist, Alice Fox, helped us to plant a flax crop in the ’round’ circular space. Throughout the season she shared her experience and skills about planting, harvesting and processing the flax to prepare for spinning. Click here for more information.

In 2022 William Arnold planted the entire circular area with sunflowers and photographed the growing process with a long-duration time-lapse and by pinhole ‘solargraph’ cameras at the ordinal points. This piece was entitled SEEDHENGE (2022) and visitors to Kestle Barton were invited to walk through the mowed path of the flowering meadow to see the installation growing. The photography was then combined to make a short film that is on our website, and can be seen following the link above.

The artist duo, Fourthland, chose the circular space as the site for a series of workshops and an installation during their summer residency at Kestle Barton in 2018 entitled I carry you in my eyes – Chant of the Whaleswan that culminated in their exhibition BREADROCK (8 Sep – 3 Nov 2018).

As part of Paul Chaney’s Lizard Exit Plan project in 2014, the circular space was devoted to a series of encampment workshops to learn about building ‘bender’ constructions with willow and other natural materials. The project culminated in an ‘off-grid’ weekend of camping and cooking foraged meals in The Encampment area.

Kestle Barton offers our meadow for weddings, and the circular space has often been chosen as a place for some ceremonial aspect of the celebrations, although we are not registered to officially marry anyone.