Wildflower meadows are beautiful spaces to enjoy all year round, and they provide a great source of food for wildlife including bees, bugs and butterflies. 

And, with the help of new and modern machinery, Ealing Council can now more easily fill the borough’s grass verges and green spaces with a riot of colour. 
 
Councillor Deirdre Costigan, the council’s cabinet member for climate action, said: “Improving the management of wildflowers in our borough and having many more of them helps biodiversity flourish, and provides residents and visitors with opportunities to re-engage with nature.” 

Boosting the area’s meadows will support the council’s Biodiversity Action Plan and follows hot on the heels of the return of beavers to the borough after more than 400 years and reintroducing harvest mice to the wild, too.

“Improving biodiversity is part of our ambitious target of achieving net zero carbon by 2030,” added Councillor Costigan. “We promised we will give back to nature through re-wilding and re-introducing wildlife. Taking care of our meadows will help us in building a more environmentally-friendly borough for generations to come.” 

The council, along with Citizen Zoo and The Selborne Society, was awarded £82,324 from the Mayor of London’s Rewild London Fund 2022 to reintroduce beavers to London, provide homes for harvest mice, and create new wildflower meadows across the borough.

Try it at home 

If you have a small growing space at home, you could create your own mini-meadow, just like local resident Paige Windust. 

Paige said: “I was inspired by Ealing Common’s beautiful wildflower meadow last summer and went about creating my own in my small garden. My patch is 1m x 2m; I generously sprinkled a box of ‘wild meadow seed’ from the local pound shop on bare soil, no compost needed, and watered every few days. No chemicals required. I saw results in just 6 weeks. Very little cost and effort, but huge gain. 

“The bees are loving the space, as well as caterpillars. The meadow has really enhanced the ecosystem of my garden, to the benefit of all my plants. There are also great mental health benefits to creating something wild and beautiful within London’s concrete jungle.”