My meadow in the Conwy valley
In 2015, I began the creation of a wildflower meadow at our smallholding in the Conwy valley. Part of the HRH Prince Charles’ Coronation Meadows initiative, it has now blossomed into a stunning flower-filled field, home to over one hundred different species of plants.
On a single day at the height of summer, the three acre meadow is home to an estimated nine million individual flowers, all of which support a myriad of bees, butterflies, beetles and other pollinators.
Each year, we take a cut of hay from the meadow in late summer and then graze it with our Highland cattle. These magnificent beasts help create the ideal conditions needed for meadow plants to flourish.
During my time at Plantlife I filmed and produced a series of videos to show the life of our meadow and how we created it. These are hosted on the PlantlifeVideo YouTube channel and can be viewed below.
This lovely little video shows a whole year in the life of our meadow compressed into just two mintues.
It’s amazing just how much the meadow changes through the seasons, from snow in January through the first buttercups and the riot of wildlife in summer, until winter grazing with our Highland cattle at the end of the year.
This video is a recording of a zoom seminar produced for Plantlife.
It tells the whole story of the creation of our meadow, from site preparation to the arrival of the first orchids.
It also shows the ebb and flow of flowers, nectar and pollen through the year and how the millions of flowers in the meadow are support a wide range of pollinators.
There is a short Q&A section at the end.
The next seven videos are a series I made in 2018 to look in detail at the progress of our meadow.
They include things like grazing, adding plug-plants to the meadow, the role of yellow rattle and the annual hay-cut.