I have a Cunning Plan...

When I was working at the Millennium Seed Bank I was fortunate to be involved in a collaboration with Atlantic College. This international school is based at St Donat's Castle on the coast of the Vale of Glamorgan, and I visited a couple of times to talk to the students and carry out some seed collecting.

And I don't mind admitting I fell in love with the place. After all, what's not to like? A dramatic, well-preserved medieval castle; bright, motivated students; fantastic Tudor gardens; a dramatic stretch of coast full of fossils; woodland and grassland that form part of the Glamorgan Heritage Coast; warm and friendly staff; a modern arts centre; there are even two swimming pools!

St Donat's from space (courtesy of Google, obviously)

So impressed was I by the place that I felt I wanted to make a contribution to its future. Wonderful though it is, it could be so much more; the wild habitats have been unmanaged for years and the formal gardens - though still lovely - have suffered a degree of neglect. After much thought I came up with what has become known as - in the words of Baldric - the Cunning Plan.

My idea is to tie together all the things that make St Donat's so special in a project that is part renovation, part habitat management. There are two central themes:

The Tudor gardens

Having done a little research, it turns out that the gardens are even more interesting than I realised. They are given Grade I status in the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales and Elisabeth Whittle, Inspector of Historic Parks and Gardens for Welsh Historic Monuments, had this to say about them: 'The wonderful situation and scale of these terraced Tudor gardens, their completeness and the lack of major alteration, give them special significance and value not only for Wales but also for Britain as a whole.'

Clearly the sympathetic renovation of these gardens has got to be a priority, and I'm currently researching lists of plants appropriate to an Elizabethan garden.

The Alton boys in the Beast Garden

Biodiversity

Although the nearby Site of Special Scientific Interest stops just short of the castle grounds, the habitats on the estate are still of importance. The woodland is mostly on slopes too steep to have been cultivated, and the clifftop grasslands are species-rich in places. Appropriate management of both these habitats would improve their wildlife value. Atlantic College has its own apiary and the students help to look after the bees; part of the Cunning Plan involves using pollinator-friendly planting to encourage not only the honey bees but also solitary bees, hoverflies, butterflies and a whole range of insect species.

So my aim is to have a series of zones radiating out from the Beast Garden - formal, then semi-formal with drifts of pollinator-friendly flowers, finally blending into the native habitats of woodland and grassland.

How the castle entrance might look

I have the go-ahead to produce a plan; all we need now is some funding...