Morley HayesLiving off the Land

 Living off the land

Did you know that Morley Hayes used to be a farm? The animals and hay bales may be long gone, but the spirit of farming is very much alive in the way we continue to care for nature — and it cares for us.

This is the heart of circularity, and it puts Morley Hayes at the forefront of where the hospitality and golf industry is heading.

Take our bees. We have 20 hives on site, home to thousands of honeybees who buzz happily among the flowers, crops and hedgerows around our golf course.

Their existence is vital to local farmers, who rely on bees to pollinate crops like oilseed rape, while our own wildflowers need them too. Without bees there are no seeds, no fruit - it's as simple as that. And what do we ask in return? Just a few jars of honey each year, which we serve to our guests.

And speaking of our food, all of our beef comes from our own estate. Our Dexter cattle are fed the hay harvested every time we mow the long grass around our fairways and meadows, a genuine circle from field to fork.

Our wildflowers play their part too, thanks to our secret weapon: yellow rattle. This delicate plant with small yellow flowers is a natural parasite, living off the roots of coarse grasses, weakening and suppressing them.

This reduces the need to mow, allows more wildflowers to flourish and feeds our bees and the entire food chain above them, all without a single drop of herbicide.

And then there are our swift boxes. One of the biggest challenges which faces our greenkeepers are leatherjackets, which are the larvae of crane flies and live in the soil and damage the grass.

A resident colony of swifts would change all that, because a single swift eats an estimated 20,000 insects a day on the wing, including crane flies.

Having them living here would dramatically reduce leatherjacket numbers season after season and keeping our greens in perfect condition without the use of pesticide.

There’s just one problem – the swift boxes we’ve installed at Morley Hayes are empty at the moment. However, watch this space!