A Year in the Life of an English Meadow - Tapa dura

A melancholy inventory of a paradise lost and regained. || Revel in Devlin's heartfelt prose and swoon at the photographs of wild orchids and delicate grasses. || Beautiful, action packed. || Within 24 hours of picking up this book for review, I had already convinced three owners and managers of wildflower meadows to buy a copy... All managers and owners of wildflower meadows should own this book, as should farming and countryside advisers who need to improve their knowledge about wildflower meadows and their wild plants.

Andy Garnett and his wife, the writer Polly Devlin, bought Cannwood Meadow in 1983. Realizing that this Somerset meadow, which has benefited from benign husbandry over many years, contains an amazing variety of wild flowers, grasses and rushes that provide feeding for moths, butterflies and other insects – some of them very rare – they asked English Nature if they would be interested in making a survey of the field. As a result of this survey Cannwood Meadow was nominated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) by the Nature Conservancy Council.
This book presents an illustrated record of Cannwood Meadow through the seasons, an account of its ecology and a review of its plants, animal life and husbandry, compiled by the Garnetts with the assistance of botanist Dr Chris Smith. A special feature is that it includes reproductions of pressings of 108 plants, which can thus be examined in minute detail. It is an invaluable record of a year in the life of an English meadow.