“I think it’s a wonderful thing to think that traditional land management practices are being remembered in the heart of our cities,” says Phoebe Miles, a Magnificent Meadows project manager at PlantLife. Those horses at the Barbican are a fantastic reminder of how animals and plants make our landscape what we want it to be Phoebe Miles, Plantlife “You have to be on your hands and knees to see them, but we’ve probably counted 200 species of invertebrate.”Īs well as pushing in seeds, keeping the grass nibbled down in autumn gives wildflowers a better chance of coming up, and little gaps in the sward make space for flowers to get established. “When you walk in, you think: ‘Oh, just a bit of grass,’ but it’s an awful lot more than a bit of grass,” says Rodgers. Toadflax and viper’s-bugloss are new arrivals this year.
The meadow is about 10 years old, and already has poppies, cornflowers, oxeye daisies, bristly oxtongue and marjoram, most of which are self-seeded. It was created on the remains of a building bombed during the blitz. The Barbican garden is a fifth of the size of a football pitch and half a mile from St Paul’s Cathedral. More than 97% of the UK’s wildflower meadows have been lost since the second world war.
Grazing animals play an essential role in maintaining traditional wildflower meadows because their hooves create dips and furrows that help push seeds into the soil and create microhabitats. Poppies, corncockles, oxeye daisies and cornflowers growing in the Barbican Wildlife Garden.
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