The meadow we plant here, makes up part of Stafford's Nature Recovery Network along with the other areas in the Stafford Brooks programme. By encouraging healthier habitats along our riverways and green corridors, we're making it easier for wildlife to flourish. This helps to support larger populations of pollinators and other species using these habitats, making them more resilient to extreme weather events we see as part of the climate crisis. 

The seed mix we've used today is for lowland wildflower meadows. A lowland wildflower meadow is UK habitat of principal importance and is a type of meadow which contains the native species we would expect to see naturally in healthy grasslands of our area. Sadly, many of the popular wildflower seed mixes you can buy at commercial garden centres are not native to the UK and contain annual species you would find in arable margins or regularly cultivated plots. They may be pretty, but they are less likely to help our British wildlife, and some species may even cause more issues than good if they spread unintentionally. Our mix contains native perennial wildflowers like great burnet, wild red clover, yarrow, birdsfoot trefoil, and many more which will continue to spread without the need for regular cultivation over years to come. These plants will attract bees, butterflies, and birds and add a pop of colour and sweet scent to this otherwise green lawn. 
 
Speaking of lawn. Despite popular belief, wildflower meadows will need to be mown and maintained too; just to a different schedule than your average lawn. We will work with the borough council to arrange an appropriate mowing schedule, but in general this area will be left to grow during spring and part of summer, but will be mown once the flowers set seed; usually just before summer holidays. This ensures the flowers have time to produce seeds which will fall to the ground and make more blooms for the following year. 

Lowland wildflower meadows like this one can take up to five years to mature. Some of the seed we planted today will be fully grown into beautiful oxeye daisies as soon as next summer, but other species take a bit more time to establish. We'll likely see their leaves and foliage in the first year, and blooms in subsequent years. That said, nature does what she wishes, so this process can go faster or slower depending on the weather we have over the next couple years.  

Click on the pictures to open the image gallery to see the wild grasses and flowers we planted:

A full list of wildflowers and grasses in the seed mix: 

• Birdsfoot trefoil, Lotus corniculatus 

• Greater birdfoot trefoil, Lotus pedunculatus 

• Meadow vetchling, Lathyrus pratensis 

• Great burnet, Sanguisorba officinalis 

• Yellow rattle, Rhinanthus minor 

• Common Restharrow, Ononis repens 

• Yarrow, Achillea millefolium 

• Wild red clover, Trifolium pratense 

• Turfed vetch, Vicia cracca 

• Ribwort Plantain, Plantago lanceolata 

• Ragged robin, Lynchnis flos-cuculi 

• Oxeye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare 

• Lesser knapweed, Centaurea nigra 

• Self heal, Prunella vulgaris 

• Sawwort, Serratula tinctoria 

• Meadow sweet, Filipendula ulmaria 

• Goatbeard, Tragopogon 

• Meadow buttercup, Ranunculus acris 

• Betony, Betonica officinalis 

• Cowslip, Primula veris 

• Common sorrel, Rumex acetosa 

• Devilsbit scabious, Succisa pratensis 

• Quaking grass, Briza media 

• Sweet Vernal Grass, Anthoxanthum odoratum 

• Yellow oatgrass, Trisetum flavescens 

• Meadow foxtail, Alopecurus Practensis 

• Turfed Hairgrass, Deschampsia cespitosa 

• Crested dogstail, Cynosurus cristatus 

• Common bent, Agrostis capillaris 

• Chewling's fescue, Festuca rubra ssp. commutata 

• Hard fescue, Festuca Trachyphylla 

• Sender creeping red fescue, Festuca Rubra ssp litoralis 

• Meadow barley, Hordeum secalinum 

• Smooth stalked meadow grass, Poa pratensis 

• Perennial ryegrass, Lolium perenne 

• Wavy hairgrass, Deschampsia flexuosa