CLOVER CLOSE CORONATION MEADOW - ELVASTON
INTRODUCTION
Across our landscape, we are fortunate that small fragments of wild flower-rich meadows and grasslands still survive. Once the colourful mantle of our green and pleasant land, a staggering 97% of meadows have been lost in the last 75 years.
In 2012, Plantlife published Our Vanishing Flora, a report highlighting the loss of wild flowers from individual counties across Great Britain since the Coronation. In his foreword for the report, Plantlife's Patron, HRH The Prince of Wales called for the creation of new wild flower meadows, at least one in every county, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Coronation.
The Coronation Meadows Project, led by Plantlife and in partnership with The Wildlife Trusts and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, is working to achieve this goal. One of the initiatives is to create new meadows at ‘recipient’ sites in the same county, using the Coronation Meadows as source or 'donor' meadows to provide seed. In this way, new Coronation Meadows will be created, increasing the area of this valuable habitat, providing new homes for bees, butterflies and other pollinators and helping to secure our wild flower heritage for the next 60 years and beyond.
CLOVER CLOSE – ELVASTON
A local site chosen for development into a new Coronation Meadow was Clover Close. The site is part of the Derbyshire County Council owned Elvaston Castle Country Park and was originally a ridge and furrow field, traces of which can be seen today.
In conjunction with Elvaston Castle park management, volunteers surveyed the field prior to the restoration works to provide a baseline for future monitoring. Then in August 2016 the field was cut and scarified, with volunteers raking out further strips of bare ground on which green hay was spread to introduce the wildflower seed which it is hoped will bloom here in future years. The wildflower meadow provides a haven for butterflies and other insects and is regularly monitored for species identification and numbers. It is planned to increase the size of the meadow over the coming years.
