Just driving past a meadow makes me go all Poldark
TODAY is National Meadows Day, celebrating the wild flowers that at this time of year turn the fields into a patchwork of colour.
My personal favourites are the wild flower meadows that line the River Swale between Swaledale and Upper Wensleydale. Even driving past is enough to make me want to go all Poldark and leap out upon them bearing my scythe.
These are fragile times for Britain’s meadows. We have lost more than 97 per cent of our wild flower meadows since the Second World War and in the process created near deserts for many of Britain’s most precious plant and wildlife species.
Thankfully our meadows have their champions – the Prince of Wales among them who has spent many years sculpting his Highgrove fields.
A few years ago I spent a happy afternoon with the author and farmer John Lewis-stempel documenting the meadows of his Herefordshire smallholding. We counted butterfly orchids, yellow rattle, speedwell and tendrils of purple curling vetch poke through carpets of buttercups. It was also the first time I ever experienced the sharp taste of sorrel. Lewisstempel told me the plant was used to flavour fish in medieval times.
The joy of meadows is they are an antidote to the ever intensive burdens on the land which modern farming practices demand. The flowers thrive in poor quality soil, free of fertilisers, and pour their own nutrients back into the land and into the animals that munch on them.
The likes of Lewis-stempel and Prince Charles champion these ancient rhythms because they see the importance of what we have lost.
But there is another way of enjoying a meadow which I shall be attempting today: it involves a picnic blanket, bottle of wine – and a long afternoon snooze.