\u201cEveryone is planting and seeding wildflowers, but sometimes we\u2019re not patient enough,\u201d said Carl Sayer, a professor of limnology and freshwater ecology at University College London<\/a> and lead author of the paper. \u201cYou don\u2019t always have to reach for that expensive commercial wildflower seed mix. We\u2019ve forgotten that nature has known what to do for quite a long while.\u201d<\/p>\n Carl Sayer, right, with his father, Derek. Photograph: Joshua Bright\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The fact that Sayer shares his surname with the meadow is no coincidence: it is owned by his father, farmer Derek Sayer, 86, and has been part of a tiny traditional farm for generations. The land was ploughed and fertilised and sprayed with pesticides as was conventional in postwar farming, but Derek Sayer stopped cultivating it in 2005 because the small field was always \u201chit and miss\u201d at producing good yields.<\/p>\n Springs feeding the Glaven chalk stream rise in the meadow and parts of the field were always boggy. The land was \u201cabandoned\u201d for five years and became a forest of thistles before Carl Sayer began studying its growing diversity, beginning an annual hay-cut in 2011.<\/p>\n Fifteen years on, thistles and other arable annual weeds have almost completely disappeared \u2013 without any human intervention \u2013 to be replaced with a flower-rich perennial sward, which is growing more biodiverse every year.<\/p>\n \u2018It looked a bit strange at first\u2019: it took a while for Carl\u2019s father to come round to the idea. Photograph: Joshua Bright\/The Guardian<\/p>\n For Sayer\u2019s father, watching farmland run wild with \u201cweeds\u201d was challenging but he gradually became more interested in his son\u2019s experiment. \u201cHe started off saying: \u2018What are you doing, Carl? What a load of rubbish.\u2019 Now he\u2019s like: \u2018How many orchids are there this year?\u2019\u201d said Sayer.<\/p>\n When Derek Sayer arrived to look at the field during the Guardian\u2019s tour, he still cast a fierce countryman\u2019s gaze over it, checking for \u201cweeds\u201d such as ragwort. \u201cIt looked a bit strange at first but I quite like it now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Each August, a neighbouring farmer cuts and removes the hay, which he feeds to his cattle, grateful for the biodiverse hay crop. \u201cMuch more diversity is a tonic to cattle because it\u2019s full of medicinals,\u201d said Carl Sayer. \u201cThe monoculture of a rye-grass field may not give them everything they need. The old farmers had it right.\u201d<\/p>\n Cutting it each year prevents the meadow becoming an oak woodland. The sward is full of baby oaks and sallow, and a patch of the field which hasn\u2019t been cut regularly is now filled with hummocks of sallow as high as a house: still wildlife-rich habitat but not as rare or much-needed as flower-rich meadows.<\/p>\n Sayer\u2019s Old Meadow was recently mowed to help the more delicate wildflowers develop. Photograph: Joshua Bright\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Removing the grass growth each year with the hay-cut also reduces the nutrients, enabling more delicate wildflowers to flourish. Several years ago, yellow rattle found its way into the meadow. This is known as \u201cthe meadow maker\u201d because it parasitises grass and creates space for other wildflowers, although Sayer said the meadow was thriving without it.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Down to Earth<\/p>\n The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone will tell you this approach [not sowing wildflowers] doesn\u2019t work unless you\u2019re close to a seed source. But no one has done a long-term study like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Carl says people living in the village love the meadow. Photograph: Joshua Bright\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The surrounding land is intensively farmed and the nearest populations of some of the rare flowers now found in the meadow are at least 3 miles (4.8km) away. One possibility is that seeds have been brought in on the hooves or coats of wild deer that roam the countryside.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone\u2019s accused me of bringing it in on my upturned trousers but I don\u2019t wear upturned trousers,\u201d joked Sayer, who was wearing shorts.<\/p>\n Sayer\u2019s Old Meadow looks noticeably different from what some conservationists disparagingly call generic \u201cMcMeadows\u201d created from popular wildflower mixes which are dominated by white oxeye daisies and purple knapweed. The advantage of \u201cself-willed\u201d meadows is that they are filled with locally-appropriate plants which are likely to be more genetically diverse than those found in commercial seed mixes. This type of meadow creation was also much cheaper, said Sayer.<\/p>\n An orchid blooming in the meadow. Photograph: Joshua Bright\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Since last year, barn owls have taken up residence in a field-edge nest box and hunt over the field. The Sayers allow local people to walk in it and an informal path now runs down one side. \u201cEveryone in the village loves it, people walk through it and respect it. It\u2019s working to make people happy as well,\u201d said Sayer. \u201cIt\u2019s the thing I\u2019m most proud of in my life. I love it. It\u2019s hope \u2013 we can recover things. We just need to do less in the recovery process.\u201d<\/p>\n The Guardian\u2019s climate forum 2026<\/a>: On Tuesday 20 October, join Damian Carrington, and our panel of experts \u2014 including Prof Andy Haines, Katie White MP, Asad Rehman, Shruti Suresh Gareth Thomas and Amy Fairman \u2014 for a hopeful and solutions-focused evening. Book tickets here<\/a> or at guardian.live<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tucked away on a country lane, a small field bursts with yellow and pink flowers. Quail and whitethroats…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-747853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782402554_536_500.jpg\")
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