The Harmony Report - Issue 37 - 07.09.26

Good morning from Fossoway Stables.

Every week, I go looking for stories that remind me why I remain hopeful and this week, I kept coming back to one thought ... small things become powerful when we do them together.

A handful of glowworm larvae or a group of neighbouring farmers or a forest protected thousands of miles away ... on their own, each action might feel insignificant but together, they begin to change landscapes.

🌍 Around the World

✨ Glowworms shine again after more than a century

This might be my favourite story this week!

Glowworms have been spotted at Nosterfield Nature Reserve in North Yorkshire for the first time in more than 100 years and the story of how they got there is wonderfully low-tech.

Ecologist Pete Cooper and a team of volunteers bred glowworm larvae, some in a garden shed, before releasing them at the reserve in 2024.

Glowworms take two years to mature, so then came the waiting! This summer, the lights finally came on.

Volunteers have now recorded glowing adult females at the reserve, and another 1,900 larvae are planned for release as the project works towards establishing a self-sustaining population.

Why it matters

Conservation doesn't always require enormous budgets or grand infrastructure.

Sometimes it starts with expertise, volunteers, patience and apparently, a garden shed!

🌾 Ten years of farmers working together and wildlife is returning

We talk a lot about collaboration, but this week brought some wonderful evidence of what it can actually achieve.

Two groups of farmers across Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire have spent a decade coordinating conservation work across more than 13,500 hectares of farmland.

Instead of each farm acting as an island, they've worked together across an entire landscape and new monitoring shows threatened farmland birds and insects recovering across the area, despite continuing declines nationally.

Why it matters

Wildlife doesn't recognise farm boundaries and by working together rather than individually, these farmers have been able to create connected habitats on a scale that no single farm could achieve alone. A rather lovely example of the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts I think.

🌿 Closer to Home

Edinburgh becomes a meeting place for nature recovery

Something rather special is happening in Scotland this week ... Conservation specialists from around the world are gathering in Edinburgh for the International Conservation Translocation Conference, the first time the event has been held in Europe.

They'll be sharing what they've learned about moving threatened plants and animals to places where populations can recover and Scotland has plenty of experience to contribute from wildcat recovery and golden eagle projects to work protecting rare plants and insects.

Why it matters

Nature recovery is rarely achieved by one person, organisation or country and knowledge shared in Edinburgh this week could help species recover in landscapes thousands of miles away.

💡 A Good Idea

This week's farmer story contains an idea worth stealing ... don't stop at your boundary.

If you're trying to make something better, ask who around you might be trying to do the same thing. One wildlife-friendly garden is useful but a whole street of them creates a corridor and one farm restoring habitat matters but dozens working together can change a landscape.

🌱 Something to Try This Week

Choose one thing you're already doing ... growing food, helping wildlife, reducing waste, supporting your community and tell someone about it. Not to boast of course, but to invite.

Ask them “Would you like to do this too?” ... you never quite know where that invitation might lead.

✨ From the Garden Gate

I keep thinking about those glowworms. Tiny larvae raised by people who wouldn't know for two years whether their work had succeeded but they did the work anyway, waited, and eventually, one summer evening, something glowed! There's something rather beautiful in that.

So much of what we do here at Fossoway works on exactly that principle ... we sow before we know what the harvest will be, we plant trees whose shade we'll wait years for, we build community without knowing which conversations will become friendships, we make small choices because we believe they matter long before there's evidence that they do.

Perhaps that's what nurture really means ... caring for something before you can see the outcome.

Thank you for reading.

Until next Monday, here's to week of NURTURE, HARMONY and small SUSTAINABLE steps.

With gratitude,

The Harmony Report Team xx