Help us find and create more wildflower meadows

At Wildflower Collective we use wildflowers to help fight the climate and environment emergency. Through Meadow Match our wildflower matchmaking project, we find local wildflower meadow sites, help monitor and protect them for the future and use their seed and hay to create new wildflower meadows. In the last 2 years we’ve run meadow training sessions for over 60 people and found enough local seed to sow across 60 ha of land in Cornwall! 

But there’s so much more we can do! 

Building on our success creating meadows in South and West Cornwall, we now want to help find and create more meadows in Central and North Cornwall in collaboration with the the West Devon Meadows group and Budding Nature CIC. We would like to help train local groups of volunteers with the knowledge and equipment to be able to visit potential wildflower sites. We would like to add more wildflower donor and receptor sites to our Meadow Match database and map, we would like to cover the costs of soil surveys and we would like to harvest sites and be able to give the seed away for free. 

Find out why wildflower meadows are so special -

Why wildflower meadows are important for climate action?

Meadows are havens for nature, home to an array of different wildflower species that also help us capture and store carbon. Many wildflowers have deep roots that lock atmospheric carbon into the soil. This soil carbon is then protected in the soil, safer, and longer-lasting than carbon locked away in trees, which is vulnerable to felling, fires, pests, and disease.

By finding meadow sites and adding them to our Meadow Match database, we can map the wildflower sites and, through plant surveys and soil tests, understand their condition. We can then help enhance and protect these important sites, so they continue to protect us from climate change. 

We can also use the plant and soil data to match up the most compatible wildflower seed donor and receptor sites.  Using local wildflower seed and hay is considered the 'gold standard' method. A receptor site needs to have similar soil pH to the donor and low soil fertility to help the wildflowers thrive. If we do this right, then we have the best chance of success in establishing the meadow and supporting the wildlife that rely on that habitat. 

Through Meadow Match, we can prevent some of the impacts of climate change by finding and protecting the sites we already have so they can continue storing carbon into the future. If we create more wildflower meadows, we can sequester and store more carbon while also creating more spaces for nature to thrive and for people to enjoy.