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17th Feb 2025


You only truly value something when you stand to lose it... or it has already gone, quietly and unnoticed, like the cuckoos from Turleigh valley. Forty years ago, their incessant calls were Spring’s wallpaper. Since 1945, 98 % of our meadows have quietly disappeared.




Today, modern ’lookalikes’ are being created by people in Winsley via ‘no mow’ (1), packets of Wildflower Meadow seed (limestone/appropriate), and mini plant plugs. Paul Jupp is an expert on meadows and is sharing his knowledge, experience and his local grown, harvested seeds with us on 26th February.



There will be much to learn! Meadows harbour an amazing diversity. There are high rise flowers like Corn Poppies, Moon Daisies, waving heads of delicate grasses and Wild Carrot, high flying insects and multitudes of invertebrate creepy crawlies below ground maintaining all-important soil. Ground-hugging leaf rosettes give rise to the many yellows of Hawkbit, Mouse-ear Hawkweed, Cat’s-ear, Smooth Hawk’s-beard, Ploughman’s Spikenard and Ragwort.






In your garden, whether freshly seeded and planted or a converted bit of neglected overgrown grass, or if you are considering replacing a mown “green desert” you can manage and plant to make the difference. Even the pristine green lawns, mown for centuries, part of the iconic view of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge after much discussion, has been converted to beautiful traditional style meadow!




Traditional management can be imitated by leaving grass and flowers unmown after a spring cut until late summer/early autumn, raking and removing hay after seed shed. If you are lucky, surprise orchids may pop up! Coarse grasses can be dug up and replaced with fine grasses and parasitic Yellow Hay Rattle plugs which hold back rampant grass growth.








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