Creating an Epic Custom Built Outdoor Space at the Manor!

in this week's episode I take my niece Letty to test drive the new lost Village play area luckily she gives it the green light fun rating fun routine 10 10 get another 10. later head of ecology Professor Tom Britton shows Nestor how to do a vegetation survey for our rewilding project so this is our recording unit and Chris joins Ben for the day to help him pull a few weeds but I'm not sure he's cut out for gardening I don't know how you expected me to work in these conditions really what condition outside [Music] today I'm here with my niece Letty and we are here to celebrate the grand opening of the Lost Village play area Letty have you heard about it I have and I've been to have a tiny look but not a big one so so I'm very excited to go see it but you're here to perform the job yeah which is to give it a rating I know so I've got to give it a rating a fun rating so I have to go around on all the different play area things and I'll have to give it a rating out of 10. and look what we can see ahead of us I know it's amazing coming into view this is the work of many people at mapperton who've been involved it was designed by Mick but it was also worked on by Max by Ben And even Chris who's behind the camera now Chris what did you do I helped move some of the woods here so here it is the Lost Village play area it's a restaurant this little obstacle course here we haven't come up with names for each of the features but I think this one basically the fun is to walk along without falling off and now and you've got it yeah and you've got all these you've got these sort of pads for jumping from one to another what could be more fun I know playing hop and Skip from one of these to the next and you could have so much fun playing multiple different games here okay fun rating I'd say it's gonna have a eight eight point five eight point five that's pretty fun isn't it my favorite bit it's the picnic area this is where you just get to sit and have your picnic this is where mums and dads and other carers can sit and watch their children as they perfect as they play around what do you think I think it's absolutely fun rating for this I think maybe not for the little not for the kids I think there should be a turn I could do everything you wanted him it's a 10 for the parents I totally agree now this one Letty is definitely a bit older isn't it yeah this is definitely I'd say nowhere no people are under the age of like five should be coming on here five well unless they're real Daredevils you've got to be quite good at balancing haven't you yeah what do you what do you do up there can you get on the very top one over there without falling off let's see oh you see Letty has fantastic balance I'm stuck I need a hand give me your hand I need a hand probably no running games just in case you might fall off right because you don't want to fall off yeah you don't want to fall off this one do you so I'd say this is more of like a crown is it good for jumping yeah yeah really good and I think this is okay rating rating out of ten nine nine to get to nine this is one of my favorite features over here Letty I know this is this is the animal brass rubbing Circle it's amazing I mean have you done it yet no I haven't I have to do after this so we've got to go and get some pieces of paper and some crayons yeah and if we were to do that we would be able to rub with our crayons you put the paper on and you get your crayon and you just rub and it's got like badgers herons so actually oh fun pizza fun fundraising I give this like a eight eight yeah these are all scoring really highly I just think this is actually amazing playground I think it's so much fun right we are now in the Lost Village itself look Summer's already been in here somebody has been in there well it's already been graffitied unbelievable somebody has created The Lost Village they've done some maths Schoolhouse isn't it so that's what you're doing this luckily they've graffitied in chalk so we ought to be able to get that off and you can just leave it up there is um something natural anyway that is obviously the Church yes you spend a lot of time in there don't you Letty yeah yeah not as much time as you spend in the schoolhouse though no is that right because the old school hall was used for teaching yes and we still have the school hall up in the village in among the Lost Village we have some features and there will be more features coming over time first off Letty you can drive a tractor I know have you done it this is I think Leo's had a go yeah look you can even do some steering because if you want to get your tractor training in do you come here there's some masterful chainsaw carving has been going on here no it's really amazing the grill of the tractor but then look at the pig now the question is is this Sage or onion I know I wonder I think that whoever it is got some fabulous ears going on I know I mean it's really got I mean who would have thought that tractor tires could be used so creatively [Music] over here we've got some benches now I don't know whether these are benches for clambering on or just for sitting these are clamberable clamberable benches and then you've got some quite cool swings people may notice something here and they may say well it's all very well having a wild swing but why is it plastic except if you do use something like wood and in this English country whether it could start rotting and that could be quite dangerous yeah so it could start rotting that is a good reason but there's another reason which is it's much lighter so if you're playing with a friend and that swings over and hits you boom doesn't really hurt yeah and like if you go that way I know then you're really really high up in the air well the thing is you're actually not that high because this swing very smart because it's been put very low down if these ropes are a bit heavier and I was a bit younger I'd be on them with you I don't know yeah but um fun rating ten ten get another 10. [Music] Letty I think this could be one of my favorite features I know so we've got two swings here yeah two different types different types of swings which one are you gonna do you try that one this one is probably for kids that are a bit smaller and a bit younger than me because I can't really lift my legs all the way up and I'm going but it's still very fun to just swing on is it I think I can even swing you on this one here you go on you go right you ready yes all right yeah High not higher than that whoa what do you think that's a proper swing isn't it yeah and this one's also made of plastic material so if you do get hat so that it's soft be fine and Letty how's your swing technique because you're kind of spinning round at the moment was that what you're intending no not really no okay I think that brings out the fun of it yeah yeah yeah it's a kind of spinny swing right while you're doing that one I'm going to try this one so Eddie what's the technique for this one pull your knees up pull your legs up this is sounding pretty terrifying right ready Chris so we've got the first aid kit nearby not me well that was um exciting so let's see what is your overall fundraiserating the drum roll who's gonna give it 10. because hooray for everyone I mean parents would even enjoy him we hope wherever you are in the world that you'll have a chance to come and visit the mapperton Lost Village player right you might find Letty playing here with her friends you might come and see me and a huge thanks to everybody who's helped put this together in particular Mick who's brainchild it was and um and then obviously Ben and Max and Chris for all the wood Chip Hooray thank you so today I'm up at our rewarding project in coatley called maps and wildlands and here with Professor Tom Britton as well as a pretty fancy piece of Kit Tom is our head of ecology here at mapton and today we're doing some surveying um so what exactly are we surveying here today so we're going to survey the vegetation in quite a lot of detail and to do that we have a series of quadrats located across the each field and the quadrats is like a one meter Square patch of ground that we look at intensively but the first thing to do is to find those quadrats and to do that we need this high-powered GPS that gives us really accurate data down to just over 10 centimeters so the first job is to is to look at Google Earth and all our sample locations and get to those points with Google Earth and then then get a really accurate fix on where we are with this bad lflex GPS system yes all right well let's go give it a go okay follow me [Music] so according to my Google Earth GPS and phone GPS which is at Accurate about two or three meters we're pretty much in the right spot for our first unbiased sampling location one of these quad rats so let's just put the sticks down now okay so that's nice and square there so this is our recording unit second thing to do is take a photograph yeah of the quadrats from above with with my phone and this is this is a georeference so I can go back and repeat this experiment in the future yeah right the next thing to do is to put a put the GPS in always in the southwest corner of the quadrat right look that Shield block there that's interesting see that there oh wow yeah never I've never seen that one really metallic green triangle on the on the body it's amazing it's this is It's fascinating what you see when you're the Harvest spider as well yeah when you really yeah and a ladybird as well one of the first things to say is what type of habitat it is because we are sampling evenly the different types of habitat present within each field this field is mostly Lowell and Meadow or aspiring to be lowland Meadow with with scattered bushes and trees over time and we can see here looking at it it's already quite Rich already so first impressions are it's either semi-improved or agriculturally unimproved I mean this is already very good you can see there's lots of nectar sources yeah in flour lots of herbs as well it's mostly broad-leaved herbs rather than grasses and the mix of species is mostly native ones rather than negative indicators associated with agricultural Improvement we can see some of the residual plants associated with that here's the white clover here so an abundance of that tells you that it was probably reseeded in the plast yeah and when we look closely we can see sort of rye grass as well yeah they're the last sort of uh the dying off elements that show you how the manage was how it was managed in the past yeah obviously it's really recovered quite nicely probably over the last 30 years or so so the next thing to do is we want to estimate the height of the vegetation right it's called the direct method and you basically just use your hand as that so look at the insects here come on yeah yeah amazing it's just teeming with light yeah so yeah so you put the stick down in the middle of the the quadrat and you look around and see what is the sort of the the most frequent height the modal height so it's about there yeah so you put your hand down to there and you can feel some resistance from your vegetation so that's the height pull the stick up and the height is 21 centimeters yeah so the next attribute we're measuring gives us an indication of how valuable this patch is for pollinators so it's the number of plant species that are in flower at this point in time so we've got that yellow one yep and the yellow one all looks to be the same species quite a few of these dandelion types actually but I think that's all the same one yeah actually this this thing here used to be super abundant and still is it Matheson but it's one of those so a wider Countryside species has really disappeared very impressive grasshopper there though oh yeah yeah that's cold eh yes that's a female with a longer repositor right yeah that's the other position at the back that's the long winged cone head which is super super abundant here in these damp damp grassland areas so this is a marsh Thistle and how come the um thistle uh I think that they are again they're very good for wildlife they're really important for many insects but the problem is they are invasive as well so left uncontrolled they can completely swamp pastures yeah so in moderation they're good the final measurement is to add up all the undesirables together give a composite measure so we've got two percent so again that that's a good score yeah anything above five is generally that so we're well within range so already this site's looking good it's got a lot of nectar no bare ground yeah and uh very few negative indicators yeah it's growing pretty highly so again you've got to strip out in your mind thistles creeping Buttercup and white clover and grasses and estimate what's left these these plants here the yarrow and that way the Autumn Hawk bits what's the combined cover of all those plants together so it's certainly more than half yeah maybe two at least two-thirds I would say possibly more yeah it's kind of all around the edges slows down a bit yeah I'd say I'd say 70 yeah I think that's that's a pretty good shout actually I think we'll go with that 70 so we've done all the broad measurements now the final thing to do is is a species list because that's a very important indicator yeah well this is we've got a yellow one haven't we and this is Autumn Hawk bit right see this Leaf here oh yeah yeah much broader Leaf this is called common cats here yeah yeah we've got rib work plantain which is pretty much in every single quad rack it's a real constant in these habitats a good indicator of flower Rich grassland we've got the black nap weed which is one of our nectar plants yes yeah actually right on the borderline we've got another plant in Flowery yarrow so it should just upgrade that okay so I think we've about finished eight to Fifteen is class of semi-improved grassland here we've got 14 14 which is what you'd what it feels like it feels like good quality semi-improved grassland in very good condition no negative indicators hopefully in a year or two we can we know exactly where we are so you know we are we can come back and see if this has been maintained or improving if the white clover is reducing in cover if the creeping buttercup's going down good I hope I hope that gives you an Insight yeah so yeah definitely on to the next one onto the next one and I think the thing that's great about these quadrats is it's something you can do quite easily at home I mean of course we have this piece of kit but if you know put some sticks down in in each coin in theory you know you could you could do this yourself and come back year on year here and see see how much your garden is improving it's a good point um but yeah I mean it's amazing how many species there are you kind of Overlook it just as you're walking past but when you actually kind of look at it for I don't know how long we've been at 20 minutes or something yeah all these different species come up um but yeah let's um move on to the next one [Music] thank you come on I know like yeah yes she's like yes Chris you need to stop we gotta start the video it's been a while since we've been on camera together I think yeah you've been away I've been away in Scotland and you've been doing the play area so I have come back and I wanted to catch up with Ben because I wanted to see what he's been up to occasionally I do help him out help him out yeah it's a bit like that yeah it's a bit like that but yeah I mean I'm a much use as Tikka right now but what are you doing Ben I've come back and I've come to help just putting radical again it's not uh it's not overly exciting but it's not a glamorous job it's just one of those things that you see you've got some nice gloves though so you guys have probably seen what ragwall is when you saw Luke pulling it and Claire and some of the volunteers were pulling ragwat so we're in a wildflower Meadow where you probably saw Julie picking some flowers and she made that bouquet of flowers I want people to actually think I I work for a living obviously not you're just spending all your time talking at the camera now [Music] is this yellowy stuff and it's poisonous for who are all the animals is that is any poisonous when it's cut and dead this hill is going to be cut for hay so okay [Music] [Music] I don't know about Ben but I reckon this is kind of finished you know I'm pretty bored of it now you know it's nice to be outside for five minutes but come on I feel like we've been here a long time because you've been chatting and going on about Barbie chatting about Barbie I don't think I was born for manual labor no I don't have anywhere either any bits you actually think you put in the bag how many beds I think I put in like 30. 35 Maybe what's worse me building a fence or me pulling ragwat both so much walking involved in being outside sure this is why they invented cars bikes Segways [Music] make sure the camera gets it so I want them to know I'm actually working [Music] [Music] foreign hello hey guys what are they up to they're just chilling oh hello what's up [Music] hello hello baz that's basil okay you see you're basically the dad then basically hello [Music] that is amazing oh that's it I've made that one right away I'm sorry I'm sorry you're not so bad don't worry oh there we go oh this one doesn't know what to think of me yet it's okay it's unsure well that's it I'm getting a pig and off they go I think that's it Ben it's all of the day off we go we go [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Mapperton Live: This (un)Aristocratic Manor Life

Views: 24,238

Keywords: mapperton, mapperton live, mapperton julie montagu, mapperton estate, mapperton estate youtube, mapperton house and gardens, Julie Montagu, Luke Montagu, american viscountess, mapperton house tour, mapperton wedding, mapperton rewilding, mapperton tour, mapperton pool, Mapperton Live pool, mapperton christmas, mapperton gardens, historic house UK, rewilding, earl of sandwich, Viscount Hinchingbrooke, Viscountess Hinchingbrooke

Id: DIlhlS3nCVg

Length: 24min 16sec (1456 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2023