Dressing down

When it comes to increasing biodiversity and meeting 2030 emission targets, a bit of scruffiness can be a good thing. Andrew Griffiths investigates.

- Andrew Griffiths

Outside New Mills Leisure Centre there is a steep bank that slopes down to the road. There is a silver birch growing and one or two other trees but it is mostly grass and usually kept nail-clipper short by the local authority gardeners. Due to Covid-19 and so many of the workforce being furloughed, it has been left to grow wild. Like many other roadsides verges over the county and the country, it has thrown up a few surprises.

Opposite the steep bankside, there is a converted mill block of flats. Karen Rogers, a professional botanist, lives in one of the flats and has watched the development of this ‘pop up meadow’ with interest. She offered to show me around.

‘It just brings a bit of joy, doesn’t it? In a time when joy is limited.’ says Karen, as we contemplated the pleasing mix of grasses and splashes of wildflowers.

Karen is everything you want a professional botanist to be. The scientific names of all the plants and grasses trip easily from her tongue but the common names, many of which I remember from my childhood, sometimes take a little longer. Her quiet enthusiasm is infectious.

‘Although what you are looking at is a bank outside a leisure centre, from the species in here it strikes me that it is a remnant of an old wildflower meadow.’ says Karen.

Here is a list of some of those plants: red clover, lesser stitchwort, birdsfoot trefoil (both lesser and common), marsh bedstraw, native alchemilla, Meadow buttercup, creeping buttercup, ribwort plantain, Ox eye daisy, Black knapweed, one of the commoner orchids… there are no great rarities here but the joyous list goes on.