MEADOW MAKING Donna’s restored meadow
GREEN DESERTS CAN BE BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE WITH KNOW-HOW AND TLC. BY DONNA RAINEY
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f I had to choose my favourite habitat to visit, it would have to be native wildflower meadows. I fell in love with our native wildflowers when I was a child. The 10-minute walk to the bus stop every morning and evening, along roadside verges and hedge banks, taught me to recognise the most common of our wildflowers. I sometimes gathered samples to bring to 16
the school nature table, another important way to learn about nature and become familiar with the names of the plants and trees around us. Dandelions, buttercups, yarrow, wild strawberry, vetches, lady’s bedstraw, dog rose, honeysuckle, foxglove, cleavers and cow parsley were just some of the common plants on those verges. But even back then, growing up in the 70s, wildflower
meadows were not part of the farming landscape. The land then was predominantly green fields, largely devoid of flowers. All the fields on our farm had names and my favourite was called McNeill’s field, presumably named after a previous owner. Unlike the other uniformly green fields, this one had an area of “rough grazing” and wet areas which included a
Irish Wildlife Spring ‘22
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25/02/2022 15:26
