Meadows fit for a king

Val looks at the value of meadows to all kinds of wildlife

- Val Bourne

I MANAGED to miss the coronation of King Charles III on 6 June this year because we’d booked a week in Anglesey some months before the date was announced. However, I admire our king greatly. He was way ahead of the game when it came to realising how nature-depleted our planet had become due the actions of the human race. He said as much in a documentary made in 1969, just after his investiture as Prince of Wales. He was also aware of climate change.

In the 1980s King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, began to create his organically run garden at Highgrove House in Gloucestershire. It’s inspired many gardeners to be greener. He also made meadows more achievable by using a mixture of spring bulbs, such as camassias, with native wildflowers and meadow grasses.

I started my own far more modest mini-meadows in 2006, by mowing a piece of ground back with a rotary mower set very low. It was a damp day and I exposed some of the soil and then raked it over with a metal-tined lawn rake. I sprinkled yellow rattle seeds, given to me by a friend, and they germinated the following spring. They look like jagged green snowflakes in the early stages. Wildflowers have also returned, including one bee orchid. I’ve added commercially grown hardy Dactylorhiza orchids as well.