Who’s that living in our gardens?

With just our grounds teams on site during the various lockdowns, we had a few visitors sneaking into our gorgeous valley garden. Lured out by the calm and silence, or possibly attracted to Phil’s packed lunches, we had visits from deer, hedgehogs, kingfishers and a buzzard that took up residence … and that’s just what we spotted. Our garden and woodlands weave their magical way from the lawns of the hotel down to the foreshore on the Helford. In all, the site covers around 65 acres and turns out we’re home to many, many wonderful creatures in the various habitats.

Keen to know more we turned to Cornwall Wildlife Trust, a charity that we have supported for many years now. Our mission was simple, to explore who we have living in our grounds, what else we might do to encourage more wildlife and to make sure they are as safe, sound and well looked after as our hotel guests!

The brilliant team at the Trust started off by working out what habitats we had and what wildlife has already been recorded in the area, including in and on the river. We have some really interesting and details maps now on display in the hotel, so if you are visiting take a look at them on the guest noticeboard by the snooker room.

As we embark on this project we wouldn’t mind a bit of help, you know, if you’re passing. Recording wildlife finds will be critical to our success. If you see any creatures, large or small, on land, water or up a tree while you’re exploring with us, please do let us know … if you can grab a picture even better. Just email anything you find to us at events@budockvean.co.uk and we’ll add it to the Wildlife Trust website and possibly our social media and newsletters.

We’re all keeping our eyes peeled too, and also cheating a little bit. We’ll be installing a wildlife camera at various locations over the next few months to see who visits us. We’ll be sure to post anything exciting on our social media.

In the meantime, we’re in the process of creating some guidance boards throughout the grounds to help you identify what you’ve spotted! We’re hoping to get them up by autumn. We’ll keep you posted on all of this as the project goes on.