Beside the Tas: a visit to a member’s riverside garden

Written by Carol Sharp.

The weather was pretty much perfect as a group of 15 supporters gathered at the home of Ross & Audrey Joliffe. You’d never know this little pocket of paradise existed just a few hundred metres away while driving along the busy A140, but as you turn off towards Saxlingham Thorpe the river Tas runs parallel to Tasburgh road where this lovely couple live. They are lucky enough to have a few hundred metres of it winding along the boundary of their land.

Ross introduces us to his plot in the alder carr. Photo Carol Sharp

Ross led us through their more traditional garden into the wildness of the woodland and down to the river. He has thinned the wood over the years and is continually experimenting with the management. It is an area of Alder Carr, a waterlogged wooded terrain populated with alder trees. He said the alders would have been coppiced 60-70 years ago and he mentioned there was some drainage across the site, which has created different habitats. He currently mows some areas, making ‘islands’ where nature is left to do its thing. He showed us where what he called Dame’s-violet also known as Sweet Rocket (Hesperismatronalis) was flowering among a sea of nettles, apparently it is one of the few flowering plants that will compete with nettles. This sweet scented biennial is loved by bees and other insects and is a food plant of the orange tip butterfly.

Now one of the rarest of our native trees, the Black Poplar is an inhabitant of floodplains and wet ditches, and was once a common sight in the countryside. The huge tree he pointed out was grown from a cutting he took from some ancient pollards. They grow very fast and can become huge as they can live for 200 years. During our visit Robert Maidstone found a rare purse gall – it’s the gall of the aphid Pemphigus borealis, found on Black poplar and poplar hybrids.

On the banks of the river Ross has strimmed the nettles, you can see on the other bank what it would be like, where even the sheep won’t approach the river. Another area where he found a pan shaped reedbed, he thought there was probably previously a pond. So he scythes it to stop saplings, creating a different habitat. We were surprised to see a native Daphne here and wild currants too.

2023.05.27.Ross visit. Photo C Sharp 4sm

The Tas here is one of the few Norfolk rivers with native crayfish. Photo Carol Sharp

The river curves into a horseshoe bend at a place Ross calls Crayfish corner. He found a dead one in 2021 and called the Rivers Trust in to identify it and look for more.The River Tas is one of only a few rivers that are still home to our native white-clawed crayfish. They found a breeding population. Habitats can be improved with twigs in the river as freshwater crayfish like rotting timber. They are a marker of a clean river as they won’t survive where peoples’ cesspits and insecticides from fields seep into the water.White-clawed crayfish are very sensitive to pesticides, in particular, flea and tick treatments from dogs, horses, cows and sheep so keeping livestock and dogs out of the watercourse is crucial. The water looked very clear and fairly fast moving. Ross has a large chair placed for viewing the delightful otters that frequently appear. And a wildlife camera set up from which he has shot some wonderful footage of them. He said they come out of the river at that point and he reckons they take a shortcut across the bend in the river!

We could hear a woodpecker but were surprised to find that occasionally an Alder tree will fall taking a woodpecker’s nest with it. Ross showed us one that had fallen recently while the Joliffe grandchildren were staying. They were deeply saddened to see the dead chicks and gave them a little funeral. Audrey mentioned how they could see the nest was lined with horse hair, which they would have got from the nearby horse sanctuary, Redwings.

Enjoying refreshments after a wonderful visit. Photo Carol Sharp

We wandered out of the cool woodland into the hot sun and had some refreshments and chat. It was a wonderful afternoon. Ross and Audrey are both passionate about wildlife and creating habitats for them to thrive and they are a shining example of how to manage land for biodiversity as well as creating a beautiful wild area for humans to enjoy.

May 2023

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