Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust expert writes about protecting the county’s wildflower meadows from being lost

In my humble opinion, there are few sights as beautiful and evocative in the British countryside as a wildflower meadow in full bloom with bees buzzing and butterflies flitting from flower to flower as delicate grasses sway in the breeze, writes Erin McDaid of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust.

While a magical haven for wildflowers, such meadows are not ‘wild’ in any true sense — they are very much the result of millennia of human intervention to make something of a marvel — but a marvel that has sadly all but disappeared.

Traditional hay meadows are a rare example of our ability to harness and enhance nature.

Allowing a diverse mix of naturally occurring grasses and flowers to grow to maturity before cutting, turning and drying the grass to create hay, allows grasses and flowers to set seed — thus ensuring they thrive year after year.

The cutting and removal of the cut grass also removes nutrients from the soils and in turn prevents delicate species from being crowded out by more robust and nutrient demanding species such as thistle and dock.

This amazing system helped create a beautiful, productive patchwork of colourful meadows framed by stockproof hedgerows teeming with wildlife.

However, modern commercial farming techniques such as switching to silage to feed larger modern breeds of animal to feed a growing population and generate profits, led to the loss of 97% of our magical meadows over the past 100 years.

So, while a landscape of traditional meadows and hedgerows might still loom large in our national psyche, in practice they are vanishingly rare.

This loss hasn’t just been bad news for the wonderful wildflowers; it has contributed to the decline of an array of creatures from pollinators such as bees, to birds including the skylark, which was once synonymous with this habitat.

The level of loss here in Nottinghamshire is believed to be as much as 99%. This shocking statistic highlights the value of the work Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust has done to safeguard sites such as Ashton’s Meadow near Retford and Eakring Meadows in the heart of the county since the 1980s and reminds us of our responsibility to care for and enhance them.

The purchase of Ashton’s Meadow in the 1980s serves as a reminder of the fragility of the fate of remaining fragments of this magical habitat.

The Trust only became aware of the meadow’s existence through a chance conversation between a pupil and teacher at north Notts school.

The teacher, Eirlys Gilbert, was an inspirational figure in the early days of our charity and, once aware of the meadow — where flowers including cowslips and green-winged orchids still thrived amidst a surrounding landscape of monoculture grass fields — the Trust sprang into action to secure it for future generations.

The site has subsequently acted as a vital seedbank for the establishment of other meadows, including the Coronation Meadow at Shireoaks and other new grasslands across the county created as part of our blue butterfly grasslands scheme launched twenty years ago this year.

As the number of meadows in our care grew, it became clear that having been created and nurtured by generations of farmers, they would benefit from a more traditional style of management.

This was made possible in 1999 with the establishment of our ‘flying flock’ of Hebridean sheep. 25 years on our trailblazing conservation grazing programme has gone from strength to strength and now consists of over 70 cows as well as hundreds of sheep — all helping to restore and sustain meadows, other grassland and heathland habitat across Nottinghamshire.

While at their charming peak in spring and summer, our magnificent meadows are havens for wildlife year-round, supporting ground nesting birds and providing hunting grounds for birds of prey such as beautiful barn owls.

Meadows also provide a little known, yet crucial service in terms of naturally locking away carbon which, if released, contributes to the ever-growing problem of climate change — the single biggest cause of nature’s decline.

While the area of wildflower meadows in our county is a tiny fraction of what it was, the meadows in our care have a safe future and we are determined to lead the charge to restore and recreate meadow habitats across the county.

Get involved:

Many meadow flowers including oxeye daisy and bird’s foot trefoil are still in bloom, providing nectar for threatened pollinators and skylarks may still be heard singing overhead — so keep an eye, and ear, out when out and about locally.

You can help support the work of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust to protect, sustain and restore precious wildflower meadows by visiting nottinhamshirewildlife.org/meadows-appeal

You can also create your own mini meadow at home by clearing an area ready for sowing in the autumn.