The Meadow Makers' Network Forum

There’s nothing like a wildflower meadow in summer, humming with life, and a delight to behold. As well as their intrinsic beauty, wildflower meadows provide natural homes to a huge diversity of life – meadow butterflies, hundreds of species of bees, a dazzling array of bugs – all food for insect eating birds like swallows, house martins and swifts and mammals like shrews, mice and bats.

1. It is estimated that there is only 3% of wildflower meadows left in England, the other 97% having disappeared over a period of the last 70 years and more.
2. Meadows are an essential habitat for many types of insect. Recent research has shown that there has been a dramatic decline over the last 30 years in the number of flying insects, including a 76% overall decline in butterflies in the last four decades, says Butterfly Conservation. Are you old enough to remember a time when you had to clean the car windscreen regularly because of the abundance of splattered moths?
3. A wildflower meadow has flowers in abundance - thousands of plants flowering in succession over several months providing food on a huge scale to many thousands of pollinators. As we know, insects like bees are essential for the pollination of meadow and garden flowers, as well as many of our vegetables and fruits.
4. Meadows are productive. Hay meadows provide a valuable crop of hay, used as winter fodder for livestock. All wildflower meadows provide beneficial herb rich grazing pasture.
5. Meadow flowers support many species. Bird’s Foot Trefoil is a food plant for 130 species alone states Plantlife and is the key food plant of the caterpillar of the Common Blue Butterfly.
6. Native meadow grasses are the sole food plants for many caterpillars of our meadow specialist butterflies – Skippers, Marbled White, Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, Ringlet, Speckled Wood.
7. The insects that live in the long grass of meadows provide food for insect-eating birds like Swallows, House Martins and Swifts. They are also food for many amphibians, bats and reptiles.
8. Many once familiar wild meadow flowers are becoming increasingly threatened. Ragged Robin, once a common plant in damp meadows, is classed as ‘threatened with extinction’ in England says Plantlife.
9. The insects that live in the long grass habitat of meadows provide food for insect-eating birds like Swallows, House Martins and Swifts. They are also food for many amphibians, bats and reptiles.
10. A wildflower meadow in full bloom is guaranteed to lift your spirits. Beautiful to look at and alive - it’s a wonderful wildlife spectacle.