Holly Booker, retail manager at RSPB Carsington Waters, talks about the wonders of wildflower meadows.
WONDERFUL wildflowers – healing in more ways that one!
How long is it since you visited a proper wildflower meadow, one that is alive with glorious colours and buzzing and fluttering with bees, butterflies and birds?
Meadows like these have become an increasingly rare sight – Britain has lost 95% over the last 50 years – but luckily we do still have some fantastic ones in and around Derbyshire.
The thing you notice first about a wildflower meadow is the plants.
In a long-established meadow, there can be over 30 different types of plant in one square metre.
The plants that grow in meadows support a wide variety of insect life which, in turn, supports the great numbers of birds that migrate to our country each year, as well as our resident ones.
Mice and voles scurry around in the thick vegetation, and you can sometimes hear them squeaking to each other as you walk along.
Kestrels and owls hunt for mice and voles, and foxes and buzzards are on the lookout for larger prey, such as rabbits, so these creatures all depend on the meadows for their survival.
The web of life is so interconnected and different creatures depend on one another for survival.
In days gone by, we humans, too, would have gone to the meadows to gather plants for their useful medicinal and practical benefits.
Wildflowers and herbs were gathered from the meadows and used in all sorts of potions, tinctures and compresses to relieve everything from stomach ache to consumption and toothache to liver complaints!
Did you know that the latex contained in dandelion sap can be used to treat warts, verrucas and freckles, and bluebell sap was once used to bind pages into books?
Water avens root can be made into a drink that tastes like chocolate and tormentil was once used to cure internal and external ailments, from the plague and cholera to infections of the skin.
There is another benefit to your health that comes from wildflower meadows and it is not anything to do with drying, boiling or extracting juice out of the plants.
It is simply to walk through them and enjoy them.
Visit Severn Trent's Carsington Water, near Ashbourne (01629 840696), Rose End Meadows, near Cromford, or Priestcliffe Lees, Miller's Dale (both Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, 01773 881188).
Or visit the RSPB shop at Carsington Water and purchase some wildflower seeds from our gardening range, then plant them in your garden and watch it come to life.
Tips on wildlife gardening can be found at www.rspb.org.uk/advice/gardening/lawns/advanced. aspx.
