Hatfield Peverel Parish Council supports Essex Wildlife Trust’s Wilder Essex strategy, which you can read about here.
Urban Wildlife Champion Project
Essex Wildlife Trust’s Urban Wildlife Champion project aims to reconnect people with nature, inspiring and empowering them to take action for wildlife in their local area.
Hatfield Peverel resident, Donna Goddard, has volunteered to be an Urban Wildlife Champion in Hatfield Peverel and hopes to build a small team of volunteers to work on wildlife projects in the village.
Donna has decided to start with a small and manageable project to create a pilot mini-meadow in the village. The site chosen is the grass verge bordering Laburnum Way and the duck pond. In order to allow the native wildflowers to thrive, the mini-meadow will be mown only 2-3 times per year and the cuttings removed to prevent more competitive plants such as nettles from taking over. A strip will be mown around the edge to provide different habitats within the meadow and to keep it looking neat.
Donna hopes that this will eventually result in:
- Increased variety of colourful native wildflowers in the mini-meadow which are attractive to villagers
- Villagers adopt more green spaces and create more mini-meadows throughout the village which Donna will provide guidance for and the Parish Council will monitor
- Increased diversity of plants and, as a result, insects and other wildlife in the village
- Insects and other wildlife able to move more easily around the village (a wildlife corridor)
Our green spaces and road verges can be home to over 700 species of wildflower, including Meadow vetchling, Oxeye daisy, Common knapweed, Bird’s-foot trefoil, Lady’s-bedstraw and much more! This diversity not only provides essential nectar sources, a lifeline for our invertebrates, but looks breathtakingly beautiful too. Flower-rich meadows can be supported in the smallest of green margins to the largest parks and recreational grounds. By adopting different mowing regimes and following a few basic management principles you can create flower-rich meadows across any town or village. Essex Wildlife Trust
If you have questions or concerns about this project, would like to offer help with this and other wildlife friendly projects in the village or have ideas for other wildlife projects, please contact Donna by phone on 01245 382550 or email wildlife-champion@hatfieldpeverelpc.com.
Wilder Towns, Wilder Villages Project
Hatfield Peverel Parish Council has signed up to Essex Wildlife Trust’s Wilder Towns, Wilder Villages project which has the following visions for wildlife and people.
VISION FOR WILDLIFE
We need more, bigger, better and crucially connected spaces for wildlife. Joined up, nature rich spaces allow plants, animals, seeds and water to move from place to place and enables the natural world to adapt to change. It gives plants and animals more places to live, feed and breed.
To recover, wildlife cannot be confined to nature reserves. Our towns and villages can be part of a nature recovery network, they can act as stepping stones and corridors for wildlife to adapt and thrive.
VISION FOR PEOPLE
We need more and better access to nature for all. We need to be connected to wildlife. Spaces for wildlife need to be publicly accessible. The link between green or blue spaces and health has now been recognised, there is evidence there are multiple benefits to reconnect people and nature. We need wildlife and wildlife needs us. Our towns and villages can provide those vital gateways to the natural world.
This is a very new project and we are still working on our plans but it is likely to include some of the following:
- Transform local verges into wildlife havens
- Commit to a pesticide free future
- Strengthen natural corridors using hedgerows to join up landscapes
- Plant more trees
- Reduce light pollution
- Create urban orchards
- Support sustainable use of previously developed land
Environmental Policy
We are now working on a plan to address the objectives set out in the Environmental Policy. We are very grateful to those residents and other interested parties who responded to our "Wilder Village Brainstorm" survey to help prioritise the objectives and brainstorm ideas for actions. You can view the survey results by clicking on the link.
Volunteer with the Wildlife Champions
All are welcome to join us working on wildlife friendly projects around the village. We will be meeting regularly from 9am-11am on the second Saturday and the fourth Friday of each month. The meeting place and tools required will be decided approximately a week in advance and published on this page or you can call or email Donna (01245 382550/wildlife-champion@hatfieldpeverelpc.com) for details.
Forthcoming sessions will take place on:

Please bring gardening gloves and secateurs if you have them and wear long sleeves. Please let Donna know if you are coming (01245 382550 or wildlife-champion@hatfieldpeverelpc.com) so that she can bring enough Wildlife Champion hi-vis vests
-
-
Friday 24th November: we will have two groups running. The first group will be removing tree guards and canes from dead hedging whips in Stonepath Meadow. Please bring gardening gloves and wear long sleeves. The second group will be weeding between hedging whips and doing a spot of pruning at the Nounsley Play Area as shown in the picture below. Please bring gardening gloves and secateurs if you have them and wear long sleeves. Please let Donna know (wildlife-champion@hatfieldpeverelpc.com / 01245 382550) if you are coming
- Tuesday 12th December and Wednesday 13th December all day - planting hedging whips on the borders of Stonepath Meadow with Hatfield Place and the new Priory Grange development and at the Keith Bigden Memorial Ground, Wickham Bishops Road
-
Big Wild Seed Sow
Many thanks to those villagers who picked up packs of wildflower seeds from the Village Hall Coffee Lounge to take part in Essex Wildlife Trust's Big Wild Seed Sow. The scheme has now finished but hopefully we will now have a few more havens for those all important pollinators in the village next summer.