The wildflower fightback
By Dan Ryan for Ethos magazine: issue 11| September 2019
Today is July 5, ‘National Meadows Day’. A day that celebrates the UK’s wildflower meadows, traditionally managed systems that have been in steep decline since the middle of the 20 century and the zeitgeist of organised, industrial agriculture. Estimates suggest 97% have been lost and with them plants, animals, and landscapes of profound ecological and cultural value.
These gentle places are quintessential parts of the countryside and their loss pains me. Without getting all Theresa May and her wheat fields about it, I’m sad that my daughter may never know the feeling of running through a glowing hay meadow, a hum-and-a-buzz with the sights and sounds of summer.
Though we’ve lost many meadows, their ghosts linger in some unlikely places. Where roads were laid through fields, we see their botanical echoes in road-side verges. These wildlife-rich strips of relict meadow, often prowled overhead by kestrels, are some of our most contested and ravaged ecosystems.
Plantlife, the wild plant charity, says over 700 species of wildflower grow on UK’s verges. Yet, we perceive these edge-lands as waste-ground, treating them as little more than road-side litter bins. Really, we should re-imagine them as a network of hyper-connected nature reserves. Too often at this time of year we see them torn apart by landowners and council contractors; mown to the ground at peak flowering then dosed with weed-killer just to stamp the boot in. This miserable ecological vandalism is nearly always wrought in the name of ‘tidying up’.
Then, a few weeks ago, something glorious happened. I drove from Cornwall to East Sussex and back, towing an ancient caravan, over a weekend. On all the many roads I took on that slog, *not a single* verge or central reservation had been touched. The A303 in particular was a kaleidoscope of riotous colour as orchids, mallows, vetches, daisies, trefoils, poppies, and many others jostled for space among the great drifts of grasses.
This felt radical and important and worth celebrating. It made me think of tales of the ancient ‘Wildwood’ and travellers being able to walk from Suffolk to Cornwall completely under the canopy of trees. We’re not quite there yet, I know. Since that drive I’ve seen the occasional flattened verge, the odd trampled roundabout, and inexplicable flailing of hedgerow. But I’ve also seen people fighting back. Gardeners and communities are leaving patches of land to go wild and enriching others with native wildflowers. I saw a hand-made sign near Helston scrawled with “DON’T MOW ME!” and a group in Reading protected a very rare lizard orchid with a cage. All beautiful examples of the very colourful resistance against the loss of wildflowers and their habitats.
We’re a nation of gardeners obsessed with tidying up, that is swiftly becoming a nation of re-wilders much more content with some mess — and it’s such a joy to watch.
Dan Ryan is an eco-optimist. He’s an educator at the Eden Project in Cornwall, where he teaches university students, facilitates workshops for businesses and is part of the team creating new Edens around the world.
