A FATHER-and-son team of agricultural contractors have invented a machine to harvest wild flower seeds to restore precious hay meadows.

The flower-rich meadows within the North Pennines Area of Oustanding Natural Beauty (AONB) are often on steep banks which makes gathering their seed a difficult task.

But now Niels and Tom Kristensen, of Whitley Chapel, near Hexham, have designed and built what is believed to be a unique machine, pictured, that harvests and removes vegetation from the flower-rich banks – including the flower seeds – which it then spreads on hay meadows where flowers are to be reintroduced.

The AONB Partnership has worked closely with the Kristensens to harvest and spread hay meadow seed since 2007. However, in all this time only flat, easy-toaccess meadows have been worked on.

Harvesting seed from steep banks offers a great opportunity as these places support an abundance of plants.

Ruth Starr-Keddle, the AONB Partnership’s Nectarworks Project Officer, spent several weeks surveying the banks this summer.

“They are wonderful places, packed with fantastic plants such as melancholy thistle and globeflower,” she said. “If we can help to spread species like these back into the meadows, not only will they look great but they’ll provide a wonderful source of food for bumblebees and other nectarfeeders.

“One of my priorities is to talk to farmers about how they manage their banks now and how they were managed in the past. So far, I have received a warm welcome which is wonderful.”

Tom Kristensen, who designed and built the equipment, said: “It has been a challenge to build a machine that would cut the vegetation and still be stable in these awkward places. I’m not aware of any other machine like this one.”