Saving our magnificent meadows
By Richard Moyse, Ranscombe Farm Project Manager
Wildflower meadows are wonderful. No question.
As a lover of wild plants since my teens, I think that there is nowhere better to explore than a good grassland — whether a meadow in the strict sense (that is, mown for hay) or a pasture (grazed by livestock).
The sheer diversity of meadows is astonishing: just in my home county of Kent you can explore flower-rich lowland hay meadows, sun-baked chalk downland, sandy and parched acid grassland, and damp, low-lying grazing marsh.
Amazing, flower-rich grasslands have even sprung up on post-industrial sites in the densest urban areas.
Further afield are the upland hay meadows of northern England, cliff-top grasslands of the western coasts, the culm grasslands of the Southwest, and many more. Each type of grassland has its own special species, its own plant and animal communities and its own distinctive feel.
Disastrous decline
Yet, the loss of meadows in the 20th century has been catastrophic.
A more than 90% decline has seen 7.5million acres of meadow disappear, a catastrophe not just for wild plants, but for butterflies, bees, birds and all manner of wild animals.
Perhaps as importantly, we’ve lost a major part of our cultural heritage — how many people are now lucky enough to live near a truly rich wildflower meadow?
These are the reasons why it is so important to have the Save Our Magnificent Meadows project led by Plantlife and supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. It is the UK’s largest partnership project transforming the fortunes of our vanishing wildflower meadows, grasslands and wildlife.
Learning to look after our meadows
I work at Ranscombe Farm in North Kent. Our reserve originally had only a few remaining acres of truly rich, old wildflower meadow. Over the last five years, we have been able to add to this around 60 acres of old set-aside land — thanks to the generosity of the Heritage Lottery Fund and of course to all those National Lottery players — and a further 20 acres of former intensive arable land.
Managing this area has meant we have needed to train and equip volunteers, acquire specialist hay-cutting machinery, and restore — with the help of our sympathetic tenant farmer — a conservation grazing regime using traditional breeds of cattle.
As a naturalist and reserve manager, I get a real kick from seeing rare meadow plants spread and increase, or finding (as I did recently) one of the UK’s rarest bumblebees busy visiting meadow flowers.
But I get just as much of a kick from taking a group of schoolchildren to hunt meadow mini-beasts, or introducing adults to bee orchids and butterflies, and seeing the real joy, interest and excitement that wildflower grasslands bring to people.
A wide range of funders have helped us get all this under way, but we know that we are just at the start of a process of grassland restoration which will take years — probably decades. It’s worth it.
Find out more about the Heritage Lottery Fund on our website www.hlf.org.uk or follow us on Twitter.
