As Maureen Lipman once said, “If it’s an ology, then it’s got to be clever” In the world of meadows and “Meadowology,” the really clever bit started with the work of James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett at the University of Sheffield, back in the late nineties.
Their work pioneered the creation of new seeded landscapes, creating cost-effective meadow
areas that offered more than a nod to their native counterparts but were far superior in terms of the range of flowers on display, not to mention how long they kept flowering for. The zenith of their work was to be seen at the Olympic Park in London, created for the 2012 Olympic Games. The Park provided a showcase for many of their unique meadow products and techniques to a global audience.
The trend for meadows as a part of
cultivated landscapes and gardens
has gone from strength to strength.
Sheffield University collaborated in
extensive research worldwide with
the company that Nigel established,
Pictorial Meadows – a brand now
synonymous with world-leading meadow
seed mixes, turf products and horticultural expertise – to create hardy varieties of meadow flowers that can thrive in a variety of climates and soil conditions.
For anyone who is involved in designing or creating gardens and larger landscapes, the incorporation of a meadow is undertaken with a mixture of trepidation and hope. This is the crux of the problem when it comes to designing a meadow for a commercial application – the confidence to press forward with a project despite the pitfalls that await.
The first challenge is the conundrum of wildflowers, natives and non-natives. Many projects fall at this first hurdle because the designers get tied up in knots debating the rights and wrongs of a particular style of meadow. As a result, they go down a path that is unsuitable – whether it is on the grounds of cost, bad ground preparation, an inappropriate product or a lack of appreciation of maintenance requirements. All of these factors can lead to disaster – particularly when the aim is to try and emulate nature, but the natural processes that are essential in establishing a harmonious meadow in the wild are forgotten.
One of the reasons for the growing popularity of meadows and naturalistic planting is an increasing awareness of the desperate plight of bees and other pollinators. Clients not only expect their gardens and landscapes to look great, they also want to do their bit for the planet.
For garden designers, the choice of products on
the market can be exciting but overwhelming, so plenty of research is essential in order to avoid being seduced by slick marketing campaigns for products that don’t deliver a sustainable environment. A few years ago, the only way to create a meadow was from seed, which could involve any combination of annuals, biennials and perennials. The problem was that the client was starting out with no more than a bare seedbed and a set of instructions!
Nowadays, a fully sustainable meadow can be established quickly and easily from pre-grown mats of plantlets, each containing up to 150 plants per square metre. The meadow often requires just one cut per year to keep it under control. For a garden designer, this is a dream come true – a fully formed meadow delivered direct to site, with a beautiful range of tried and tested mixtures of flowers.
The Meadowology journey has only just begun – there is so much more to learn, so many stunning plant combinations to be created and so many more meadows to be grown.
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