Claire Cox, Head of Development, and Rachel Crewes, CEO of Harewood House Trust, with Samantha Webster and Caroline Pullich, Partners at NFU Mutual.

NFU Mutual Agents and their staff at the Boston Spa & Harrogate agency recently nominated local charity Harewood House Trust, to receive a donation of £6,509 from NFU Mutual’s national £1.92million ‘Agency Giving Fund’.

The leading rural insurer launched this fund, now in its fifth year, to help local frontline charities across the country. The Agency Giving Fund forms part of NFU Mutual’s £3.25m funding pledge for both local and national charities in 2024, to assist with the ongoing recovery from the pandemic and to help tackle the impact of the rising cost of living.

To ensure these donations reach all corners of the UK and are directed to where they’re needed most, all NFU Mutual Agencies, with more than 280 offices nationwide, have been given the opportunity to nominate local charities to receive a share of the fund.

The UK charity sector has faced unprecedented challenges due to the combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing cost of living crisis. Harewood House Trust is an independent educational charity as is amongst those that have been affected.

Thanks to the support of NFU Mutual and the Harewood Estate, Harewood House Trust will launch a new nature safari experience sharing fabulous views over the lake, woodlands and parkland.

Young girl and adult looking at the wildlife below the bridge in the Himalayan Garden, Tom Arber

The funding will go towards providing transport and opening up access to hard-to-reach areas, giving visitors a chance to spot some of the incredible array of wildlife. Harewood is home to amphibians, butterflies, and insects, not to mention the large population of red kites and deer who call Harewood their home. This initiative will ensure that more people can experience the natural beauty and diverse species that thrive in these areas.

Caroline Pullich, Managing Partner at NFU Mutual Boston Spa Agency covering Yorkshire, said: “We’re extremely proud to have nominated Harewood House Trust for this donation and are delighted to be able to support the vital contribution they make to our community. NFU Mutual’s Agency Giving Fund was first created in 2020 in response to the pandemic, and this ongoing support is helping to change lives, providing both emergency support and building long-term resilience.”

Claire Cox, Head of Development at Harewood House Trust, added: “We are so grateful to the Boston Spa & Harrogate Agency of NFU Mutual, for nominating us for a donation from the NFU Mutual Agency Giving Fund. Thanks to this support, we can provide safari transport that will enable visitors and school groups to easily explore more of the landscape. This will also benefit those audiences in receipt of Universal or Pension Credit and other benefits who are using our new £2 day ticket. The safari will be an opportunity for everyone to learn about the incredible natural environment at Harewood and what we are doing to protect it for future generations.”

I took on my role as Bird Garden and Farm Experience Manager in December 2015, joining Harewood from Edinburgh Zoo. As manager, it’s my responsibility to oversee the daily running of the Bird Garden and the newly created Farm Experience. It’s an exciting, busy part of Harewood which is at the start of a three year development plan to enhance this much loved part of the grounds.

My day begins at 8am when I arrive at the Bird Garden kitchen with the rest of the team. The Bird Garden is home to 37 different bird species which all have specific dietary needs. From the tall, elegant cranes to the critically endangered Bali starling, we make sure each bird has the right food. We also prepare buckets of chopped carrots, apples, pears and leafy greens for our rabbits, guinea pigs and farm animals.

Once prepared, we head to the Bird Garden and begin the task of feeding and cleaning all the aviaries. We check all the birds to make sure that they are in good health whist we’re in the enclosures before the visitors arrive. One of my personal favourites in the Bird Garden are our family of palm cockatoos. These are unusual birds and it’s the first time I’ve worked with them. The youngest of the three birds is very inquisitive and he will often fly around the keepers, watching them closely as we clean and prepare the large aviary.

At this time of year we often find nests full of eggs which we will leave with parents to look after. On some occasions it may be necessary to take the eggs carefully to our artificial incubation room. Here we place them in specially designed incubators and hand rear any chicks that might hatch.

Once all of the birds are fed and checked, we go for a well- earned cup of coffee!

The next job is to clean out the farm animal paddocks and give them their first feed of the day. At 12pm, one of the keepers will take a bucket of eggs, veg and fruit to the pig enclosure. Here we invite visitors to take an item from the bucket and throw it over the fence for the pigs to enjoy. They are full of character and, since their arrival in March, I’ve grown very fond of them. Once the pigs have had their fill, we move onto the next paddock. Once again visitors can feed leafy greens to our hungry pygmy goats.

After lunch, I often leave the Bird Garden and Farm in the capable hands of the team and head over to the office to carry out the necessary (and inevitable!) paperwork for the day. This includes record keeping, ordering supplies, planning for upcoming events, liaising with the vet, managing new arrivals and arranging transportation of animals who may be leaving our care.

A significant role for the Bird Garden is the care and preservation of endangered species. Many of the birds we manage are in captive breeding programmes which supports their ongoing survival. These breeding programmes exist to support the genetic variation of captive populations. Computer databases help compile studbooks that record the details of each individual animal in the programme. This includes the animal’s sex, date of birth, and full family history. No money changes hands when we exchange animals with other zoos. Our aim is purely to save and protect endangered wildlife.

We have welcomed several new additions including six Humboldt penguins which arrived in early March from the Cotswold Wildlife Park in Oxfordshire. We also took on an egg which our colony have adopted. We hope that this foster-chick will hatch soon.

Other new additions include a pair of cheer pheasants which form part of our Himalayan themed enclosures overlooking the Lake, and a large group of roul roul partridge, an appealing, ground dwelling bird from Borneo.

When I’m in the office, it’s also the time that I catch up with the rest of the team who work outside the Bird Garden. The team at Harewood have a lot to juggle from school groups to TV interviews!

At 3:30pm, I will head back to the Bird Garden to carry out the Daily Penguin Talk and often find myself introducing not only the penguins, but also the wild grey herons and red kites that visit the enclosure hoping they might help themselves to a sprat or two!

Once I have answered the varied and interesting questions from visitors, I will either head back to the office, or carry out a variety of tasks around the Bird Garden until it is time to close for the evening. Every day there are new and exciting challenges arriving, so no two days are ever the same.

By Nick Dowling, Bird Garden and Farm Experience Manager

Work has continued today in the Learning Garden, with the help of Audrey, Trevor and his team.  Today, the focus was clearing the pond area, and preparing the vegetable plot.

After last week’s session, and our battle with the Philadelphus shrub, Trevor and his team were today successful in removing the plant from our pond area.  In addition to this, the team cleared the rest of the pond area, and dug the hole read for the pond to be put in place.

With Trevor’s expertise, the shrub is finally removed from the pond area

Once the pond area was cleared, work then began on the plot in the opposite corner of the garden.  This plot will become our vegetable garden.  Before any planting of vegetables could start, the area needed to be cleared, and Audrey spent the morning raking the leaves and weeding the flower beds, ready for the digging to begin.

The corner of our garden to become our vegetable plot, cleared by Audrey

Next session, we hope to put the pond lining in place, and finish preparing the plot ready to plant some vegetables!

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The Harewood Learning Team.

The Harewood Learning team have this Monday begun work on the Harewood Learning Garden, and have learnt first hand the hard work of gardening!

Our aims of the first gardening session were to clear the corner of the garden ready for our pond area to be built, and begin work on our habitat pile.  The corner of the garden in the picture below is going to be where we dig our pond, so the first job of the day was to clear everything from this corner, before any digging could begin.  After raking leaves up from the area to become our pond, we soon came up against a large barrier in the form of a very troublesome shrub called a Philadelphus.  With very deep roots, this shrub was well and truly rooted in the ground, and consequently delayed our preparation of the pond area, as we were unable to remove it!

The Philadelphus shrub, which needed to be removed before the digging of the pond could begin

All the leaves raked from the area and the Philadelphus shrub still not removed!

After battling with the Philadelphus shrub, our next job in the garden was to rake the many dead leaves that had fallen in the flower beds.  This was a long job, as the piles of leaves were very deep, and we had been told to watch out for toads, who liked the damp piles of dead leaves!

The flowerbeds of the Learning Garden, ready for raking

All the leaves we raked had to be collected, as we would be using them to make our habitat pile, in another area of the garden.

For the habitat pile, we needed to rake all the leaves into a very large mound, in our wilderness garden.  Once the leaves were all in a pile, we gathered lots of branches and twigs from the garden, and laid them on top of the leaf pile, to creat our habitat pile, which we will continue to add to next week.

Further progress on the garden to follow…

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This Spring the Harewood Learning Team have introduced new sessions for Schools, including a new session in the Walled Garden for pupils to get hands-on experience of planting, growing and harvesting their own crops as well as learning about the wartime ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign!

Harewood Head of Learning Jennifer Auty with one of the Kirk Hammerton pupils taking part in our new Walled Garden ‘Dig for Victory’ School Session

Head Gardener Trevor Nicholson delivered the first session to pupils from Kirk Hammerton Primary School who were thrilled to see their pupils learning while getting their hands dirty and having fun in the fresh air too!

The new ‘Dig for Victory’ School Session allows pupils to discover more about the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign and get some hands-on gardening experience to learn what life was like in the wartime years when rationing and food shortages were part of daily life.

This extended session also reveals more about Harewood’s involvement in the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign as well as the wartime years at Harewood when the Terrace was dug up to create vegetable plots and the Gallery in the House was used as a ward for the convalescent hospital.

You can find out more about our Learning Sessions for Schools on our website www.harewood.org/learn and contact us to request a brochure learn@harewood.org

Read more about the Gardens on our webpages…