Hopton House Environmental Policy
The garden is a wildlife rich environment. The fenced pond is our own and full of frogs and newts. The birds use it as a bathing area and for somewhere to drink. It is also a breeding ground for dragonflies and large water beetles and snails.
We have planted native hedgerows to encourage more birds. We leave the paddock un-mown apart from the paths. This encourages a great number of birds such as yellowhammers. We try to avoid using any chemicals in the garden.
The nettle patches provide a wonderful environment for butterflies and we have seen an increase in these over the years. We also leave log piles around which are very attractive to the hedgehogs, stoats, toads, frogs and newts.
We recycle as much as possible. South Shropshire District Council has a 2 weekly rubbish collection. Please recycle what you can and we request that you don’t leave any excessive rubbish.
We have 2 bins in the shed. The green bin is for all food waste and cardboard ONLY.
We recycle cardboard, plastic bottles, glass bottles, newspaper, greetings cards, magazines and drink and food cans. It would help if you could leave these beside the bin in your room. We also recycle all food waste including cooked. We have a wormery for our kitchen waste and compost bins.
We have a towel and bed linen policy. These are changed every 7 days ( and with each new set of guests obviously! ) unless you request a more frequent change. Towels placed in the bath will be replaced with fresh ones.
We use environmentally friendly cleaning and laundry products and recycled toilet paper.
We do have a septic tank and a bio digester. Anything that is not quickly bio degradable stays there and has to be cleaned out. We have had problems with people flushing sanitary items etc. down the toilet – so please toilet paper ( and the toilet duck cleaning pads ) only.
We are on a water meter. We have lots of water butts to water the garden. Please don’t leave the tap running when brushing your teeth.
Please turn off lights when not in use. We are gradually replacing bulbs with low energy ones.
We shop locally where possible and have home delivery service from the local shop which cuts down our own miles.
We would encourage all guests to stay and explore the local area – how about making use of the train to visit Shrewsbury or go down into Wales?
If you have any other suggestions for how we can be more green please let us know!