Enhancement work to begin for wildflower meadows

A programme of work is set to begin to enhance a number of Denbighshire wildflower meadows.

The Council’s Biodiversity and Streetscene teams have planned work to support the establishment and diversity of some of the county’s wildflower meadow sites this autumn.

The Wildflower Meadows Project helps and protects local nature and supports community wellbeing across the county. It is funded by Welsh Government, through the Local Nature Partnerships Cymru ENRaW project.

Enhancing the meadows provides benefits for everybody, not just nature, withcommunity benefits including improved air quality, urban heat cooling, physical and mental wellbeing and areas of mixed interest for education and play.”

Sites selected this year for enhancement have been identified by survey work carried out by the Biodiversity team. The scarification work will involve raking the grass or using a scarifier to expose bare soil and create space for new wildflower seeds to germinate and establish. The benefits of doing this are to reduce grass competition, promote seed germination and encourage increased biodiversity by boosting the diversity of wildflowers.

Not all sites identified can be enhanced this year and further sites that may benefit from this work are hoped to be included next year. Larger sites have been prioritised this year to ensure we have an increased local seed supply to harvest from to help seed more sites in future years and retain the project’s local provenance.

During the 2024 season 297 different wildflower species were recorded across these sites and a total of 5,269 individual wildflowers were logged overall, far outnumbering species found on more regularly mown grassland.

The meadows vary from site to site and usually contain a variety of native grasses and wildflowers. 'Wildflowers at our sites are all native species, and mostly perennial, which means they will come back every year and support the greatest amount of wildlife.' 

Bringing back and maintaining these meadow areas is an important step in helping to reverse the decline and increase local species richness and the Council has committed to capitalising on using its grassland areas for nature recovery, where appropriate.

Wildflowers provide bees and other pollinators with food across the year which supports our own food chain.

Without this habitat support for insects, nature’s pollinators would be less, impacting on our own food chain as these pollinators support the growth of most of our fruit and vegetables.

Meadow soil can also sequester as much carbon as woodlands, reducing greenhouse gases to help tackle climate change.

Cllr Barry Mellor, Lead Member for Environment and Transport and Biodiversity Champion said: “Enriching and enhancing the meadows will help create better connected corridors to support nature to travel and pollinate other sites to help tackle the nature emergency and encourage more nature back into towns for our residents to enjoy.