Putting the spotlight on the biggest issues in gardening today
Wildflower meadows are making a comeback in every county in Britain after 10 years of intensive conservation efforts – but they’re still under threat from development and the rush to plant trees, says conservation charity Plantlife.
More than 100 newly created or restored meadows have burst into life under the Coronation Meadows initiative, launched in 2013 by the then Prince Charles. The project is now inspiring others: English Heritage has pledged to create 100 meadows to mark the King’s coronation, ranging from a new meadow at the Palace of Westminster in central London to restored meadows beside Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. “We hope it will encourage local communities to get involved,” says English Heritage CEO, Kate Mavor.
Plantlife wants to restore a further 10,000 hectares by 2030 – but it still won’t reverse the loss of 97 per cent of our wildflower meadows since the 1930s, says the charity’s meadows adviser, Matt Pitt. He points to neglect, house building on apparently empty green fields and ill-advised tree-planting projects on open grassland – all eating away the remaining fragments. But, he says, meadow restorations mean everyone can now experience meadows for themselves.
“Lots of people have memories of walking in the countryside as children and seeing clouds of butterflies, and nowadays that’s no longer the case,” he says. “If you go into a meadow, you get the life and colour that’s been lost from the wider countryside.”
Wildflower meadows have also become a must-have for greener gardeners, ticking on-trend boxes like pollinator-friendly planting, rewilding and carbon sequestration. Quick-fix solutions like wildflower turf and seed mixes have sprung up to meet demand – but a lasting meadow takes years to establish, says botanist Dr Peter Stroh of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. “Time is very important – you want to think long term, maybe 10 years ahead,” he says. “Annual flower mixes with cornflowers and poppies look lovely, but they won’t last.”
He’s experimented with two patches of meadow: one sown in bare soil, the other sown into grass mown very short and raked to expose the soil. Although the bare-soil site had more flowers in the first couple of years, one
