Royal Meadows

Charles Announces Coronation Wildflower Meadows Initiative

Prince Charles’s devotion to the rural landscape is long-established and well-documented, so a welcome but unsurprising development today as the heir to the throne announced the Coronation Meadows Initiative, which aims to re-establish wildflower meadows across Britain.

Since the advent of intensive farming in the 1930s, it is estimated that up to 97% of wildflower meadows have been lost, with native British speciae of flora and fauna suffering huge decreases in their populations as a result.

Speaking in the bucolic setting of a wildflower meadow at Highgrove, his country home, Charles told a reporter from the Daily Express: “As the Diamond Jubilee last year provided a wonderful opportunity to plant Jubilee woods and avenues and things like that, I suddenly thought why don’t we use the Coronation anniversary this year as an excuse to do the same things with wildflower meadows.”

Experts with Plantlife, the Wildlife Trusts and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, all of which have Prince Charles as their Patron, are hoping to identify a total of 107 meadows – at least one in every country of the UK – by the end of the year, according to a report in the Telegraph, which adds that these remaining meadows will act as “donor sites” where hay and seed will be collected to restore or create new meadows.

The sites designated as Coronation Meadows are available to view online.

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.