At this time of year our wildflower meadow is looking at its best and it brings me such joy. We created it over four years ago when we decided to cut the alpaca field in half because, as by then there were five rather than six of them, they didn’t need quite so much space. Through my practice I grow all the plants that I work with and most of the materials that I use are natural and come from where I live, so it was important to me to try and make the field even more biodiverse and create a haven for wildlife generally and insects in particular.

Wildflower meadows are now very rare in the UK, much more so than across Europe, and they’re vital habitats for insects which are disappearing in this country far, far too rapidly. I feel that people have got so disconnected from nature they don’t understand the importance of insects, that they are needed to pollinate plants so that we have food, and that we would be lost without them.  

Helen Darragh from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust had come to survey the existing plant life in our two-acre field and given us advice about how to make the most of it: divide it into 20-foot-wide strips and plant alternate ones with wildflowers while leaving the others as grass. So, with that in mind, in September 2021 we enlisted wonderful Nick, a local farmer, to help us.

He first ploughed the wildflower strips then tilled and seeded them before rolling them to make sure the seeds were embedded into the soil properly. We used 14kg of King Wildflower Mix and it was a bit of a gamble as the soil was on the cusp of being too rich for the flowers. But in the first year it was absolutely fabulous – of the 27 varieties of seeds we planted, we counted at least 17 that came up that following summer – and seeing it bloom has been one of the highlights of the summer ever since – different flowers in different months.

In September each year, once everything has finished flowering, Nick comes back and cuts the whole field. Two weeks later, when what he’s cut has dried out, he turns it in the hope that the seeds will drop back into the soil ready for the following year. 

My favourite of the flowers is Cornflower or is it White Bedstraw, and I love the Yellow Rattle (named because of the noise the seed heads make when the seeds dry out inside them), too – if it increases year on year it’s a really good sign of biodiversity because it puts down roots that strangle grass and helps the wildflowers take over. It’s being threatened by climate change because it needs a hard frost in order to germinate and we don’t get the hard winters now that we used to, so often people put the seeds in the freezer before they scatter them across the field.  We’ve also got amazing vetches, red campion, oxeye daisies, corn cockles, wild carrot and knapweed and more.

We actually don’t feel that we have seen as many insects and butterflies on it as we’d hoped for (I sadly think there are less insects everywhere), but it’s so beautiful, particularly in the first year when we had cornflowers in it. And it chimes so deeply with the mantra that I follow in both my work and my life, to touch the earth more gently and respect the planet, our only home.