Headon, Retford farmer John Ogle has won this year’s Wilkinsons Environment Award for Nottinghamshire.
For the tenth year, the Worksop-based home and garden high street retailer, Wilkinsons, sponsored the farms’ competition, with John scooping the top prize of £5000.
"John’s farm showcases a wide variety of wildlife habitats," comments Bourne, Lincs farmer and judge, Tony Reynolds.
"Our tour of the farm showed that John is a true conservationist, but with a keen eye for innovation.
We were particularly taken by his use of wildflower seed mixes in field margins: the variety of plant species and the intensity of insect life that they attracted were superb.
John’s work to include ponds, well-managed hedgerows, heathland reversion and conservation headlands showed just how much care he takes of the wildlife on his farm whilst still producing top quality arable crops."
This year’s second prize winners, and the recipients of £2,000 each, are T Hammond & Sons of Redhill, Arnold, in the large farm category and Miss Vera Oxby of Needham Hill Farm, Kinoulton who won the small farm category.
This year’s runner up is Michael Jackson from Cross Hill Farm, Laxton. The judges’ decision to place John Ogle in first place proved a difficult one. Tony Reynolds continued:
"Both the large and small farm category winners were exceptional, showing that scale is not a bar to conservation, whether it’s across hundreds of hectares, or tens.
Integrating conservation on the scale that the Hammond family have achieved and mixing high value vegetable production with habitat creation is no mean feat.
And Vera Oxby’s oasis of calm at Kinoulton showed that a few acres can be a wildlife paradise, too."
John Ogle is proud of his achievement: "I am incredibly pleased to have won this year’s Wilkinson Environment Award. I hope I have proved that it is practical to integrate commercial arable farming with conservation and environmental protection. I enjoy my conservation work as much as I do my farming.
Seeing the results of the planting, pond creation and management and adding a variety of seed mixes to my headland schemes is incredibly rewarding.
"I was pleased that the farm made the final judging, so that I could have a chance to show the different habitats I’ve created, including the new orchard, the management of the woodland and using triticale as a pesticide-free headland crop for insect and bird food.
Although I’ve entered into both the entry and higher level stewardship schemes, I have still found areas on the farm where I can add value for wildlife and support the Campaign for the Farmed Environment.
I hope that the prize money can be put to good use on the farm – certainly one of the projects will be to put up some more nesting boxes for tree sparrows. We already have a good colony on the farm, but I’d like to encourage more."
The tenth Nottinghamshire Environment Awards are sponsored by Wilkinsons, the Nottinghamshire-based home and garden retailer. They reward farmers who successfully integrate farming and wildlife conservation on their holdings.
The three winners and their families will be invited to a special presentation event at the Wilkinsons headquarters at Manton Wood, Worksop, this autumn.
For more information please visit www.wilko.com
