Bog Myrtle & Peat

This first year of my project to preserve and create black grouse habitat has almost come to a close (although this blog is much younger), and as the moor starts to shrink back into inscrutible silence again, I notice that one of my most important plants of 2010 is dying away as well.

I first realised that we had blaeberry on New Year’s day, when I fell into a ditch and smacked my face off a large bank of the naked green strands. Since then, I have come to know and love the determined little plant, gobbling down its berries in July and cutting back trees to allow it more sunlight through February and March.

Blaeberry really is so important to black grouse and many other moorland birds, and although it is in serious decline across the majority of the farm, the small areas where it thrives are doing fantastically well. The little leaves may be falling down to the moss, but the plan is that when they return again next spring, things will look even brighter than usual. I have a busy winter ahead, clearing trees and protecting the vulnerable shoots from livestock, but if all goes according well, blaeberry should soon enjoy a pleasant turnaround in fortunes.