The Hare’s Corner (making space for nature)

The Hare’s Corner is an Irish book, a powerful celebration of a quiet and hopeful revolution taking place across Ireland where people are making space, for nature to thrive once again. Great reading for any country!

This beautifully illustrated book brings together ten inspiring profiles of participants in a national project, where farmers, families and community groups are restoring habitats and reviving species, across both rural and urban landscapes.

Woven throughout the book are poems by Jane Clark, along with lovely art and photography. Each page invites readers to reconnect with wild corners of the world, and perhaps to create their own.

Named after the traditional practice in  farming of ‘leaving a field edge for wildlife’, this is a testament to resilience, renewal and the deep wellbeing that can blossom, when we let nature in.

Read more on nature-friendly farming.

The Hare Preservation Trust advises to break up blocks of cereal and provide more grass for grazing on arable farms and run wide strips of grass on open fields (or have pasture patches). It’s important that hares can raise leverets in quiet undisturbed areas, so leave areas uncut and un-grazed for hiding.

If making silage, cut the field from centre outward so hares can escape. And leave ploughed or rough-cultivated areas left so hares can sleep. Leave 6 metre uncultivated margins around arable fields and leave cereal stubbles over winter.

About the author

Jane Clarke is an acclaimed Irish poet on nature who lives in Co. Wicklow (Ireland). This is like our Kent (known as ‘the garden of Ireland’) and known for its stunning mountain scenery and ancient monastic sites.

It also boasts Ireland’s highest waterfall, the largest national park and Glendalough (the 6th century ‘city of two lakes’.