Ecology and Wildlife

In 2018, Nelson's Wharf was honoured by the presentation of the Marsh Christian Trust Award for Promotion of Lepidoptera Conservation by Butterfly Conservation.

The award reflect years of work at Nelson's Wharf with a great deal of help from the superb staff and volunteers of the Warwickshire Branch of the Butterfly Conservation.

Nelson's Wharf is adjacent to the ten acre Stockton Cutting Site of Special Scientific Interest, (SSSI), of which approximately eight acres is on Nelson's land. The SSSI is managed on our behalf by the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and Butterfly Conservation.

Learn more about Warwickshire Wildlife Trust here and Butterfly Conservation here.

Nelson's Wharf has always been as environmentally friendly as possible by the use of Eco friendly cleaning products, formaldehyde-free toilet fluid and recycling as much as we can. All the buildings are extremely well insulated and the main buildings are heated by ground source heat pumps which in turn are partially powered by some 14Kwh of PV solar panels. The buildings are relatively carbon neutral and made predominantly from sustainable timber including the Western Red Cedar cladding.

When the first building was erected, we created a wildflower meadow using a seed mix made up to a special recipe which matches the natural flowers on this soil in this region. It cost hundreds of pounds for a 25kg bag but it has paid off. We now have a natural meadow which has been inhabited by the many invertebrates including the Common Blue butterfly. The butterfly isn't very rare but it is the fact that it has populated the area so quickly that makes it significant especially in an area that was chest high with brambles and nettles a few years ago.

We are naturally proud of our ecology strategy. Since restoring the land in 2013, we have planted over 4000 native trees and shrubs including Elm, Cherry, Crab Apple, Silver Birch, Field Maple, Elder and Oak and many hedging shrubs. More have been planted in winter 2023/24. We have also been improving the grassland on our fields including grazing with rare breed sheep.

Butterflies

We are proud of our gains with butterfly conservation and work continues in association with Warwickshire Butterfly Conservation to improve the area for butterflies.