The Hive meadow
The summer sunshine brings blooming wildflowers across Hampstead Heath, creating a tapestry of colour in the Heath’s meadow areas. This year, we’re especially pleased to see the floral displays in our newly-created wildflower meadows around Parliament Hill.
Our newest meadow area is the Hive meadow at the Savernake Road entrance to the Heath, behind the Hive building near the paddling pool. Formerly an unloved grassy patch with limited wildlife value, it is being transformed as a colourful summer spectacle that will benefit biodiversity. This area has been created in partnership with Butterfly Conservation as part of the Big City Butterflies Project as one of many new habitat patches created for butterflies to feed and breed across London.
The Hive meadow blooming in June 2023
Meadow creation
Creating a wildflower meadow in this area was no easy task. The existing grassy area was highly fertile, which would have allowed dominant grasses and plants such as nettles and dock to outcompete any wildflowers. This means it was not as simple as reducing mowing and needed a lot of ground preparation, which you can read about on our wildflower meadows page.
We’re thankful to corporate groups for much of the hard ground preparation work, our youth volunteers who planted bulbs and wildflower plug plants, Gospel Oak primary school who helped us seed it and all the generous donors who supported our project through our fundraising page.
Before
During
After
The growth of the meadow has been phenomenal, and there are splashes of summer colour provided by the cornfield annuals in the mix, with yellow Corn Marigolds offsetting blue Cornflowers and red Corn Poppies. Planted perrenials such as the large Oxeye Daisies and Red Campion are also blooming. Many insects including bumblebees have been attracted to the flowers, and birds have been seen foraging amongst the plants for insects for their nestlings. It has also been lovely to see people stopping to appreciate the meadow flowers as they pass. Now the meadow is in flower, we will be monitoring butterflies and other wildlife using it, to show the benefit of the project for wildlife.
Nearby wildflower areas
As well as the meadow, visitors may have noticed relaxed mowing on the other side of the path. This has encouraged taller meadow grasses and allowed a drift of white cow parsley to flower.
Nearby, our ‘mini meadow’ across the Savernake Road bridge is looking beautiful in its second year, with perennial wildflowers like Oxeye Daisy, Wild Carrot and Meadow buttercup coming through amongst the self-seeded annuals. Together with our pollinator-friendly planting opposite and our new hedgerow alongside the footbridge this provides a wildlife corridor between the Heath and gardens on Savernake Road, not far as the butterfly flies!
As well as these new meadow areas maintained by Heath Hands volunteers, the City of London Corporation has changed their grassland mowing regime to allow more meadows to grow across the Heath. This is part of the Heath’s climate strategy, as longer grassland locks in carbon, whilst also providing better habitat for wildlife.
In addition, they have also worked with Butterfly Conservation to create a new wildflower meadow at the Heath Extension - so do watch that as it develops!
All of this meadow creation will benefit pollinators, such as bee, butterflies, moths and hoverflies as well as a host of other insects. In turn these are food for other species like hedgehogs, bats and birds such as House Sparrows.
You can find out more about life in the Heath’s meadows by visiting our Nature Interpretation Centre at the Dairy and picking up our free meadow spotter sheets, or buying our guide to wildflowers on the Heath. You can also support the maintenance of these meadows by donating to our Wildflower Meadow Appeal.
