Clifton Hill Meadow
In autumn 2021, the council agreed to our request for wildflowers on Clifton Hill, the grassy slope below St Andrew’s churchyard. The westernmost section of the site will be a wildflower meadow, and the rest a wildflower 'floral lawn' - suitable for picnics as before. And most of the daffodils that everyone loves will stay.
Please volunteer here if you'd like to help with creating or maintaining the meadow.
Below, we explain:
Let’s wild Bristol up!
What is happening on Clifton Hill
Please volunteer here if you'd like to help with creating or maintaining the meadow.
Below, we explain:
- how the project is progressing over time;
- how you can create a similar meadow or wildflower ‘floral lawn’ in your own garden;
- how you can propose a similar ‘public space’ project to the council.
Let’s wild Bristol up!
What is happening on Clifton Hill
In November 2021, the council cut the grass on the whole site. Then volunteers raked the grass so that cuttings could be removed. This prevents the cuttings from decaying back into the soil and refertilising it - and this more infertile soil favours wildflowers over grass.
To best promote flowers, the council will cut the grass once or twice a year, and volunteers will rake up the cuttings afterward. The meadow will have native wildflowers - plus non-native ones to extend the pollen season for our insect friends.
The meadow has three sections, each prepared in a different way to vary the appearance and see which works best. The ground in one section had shallow cuts made in it (scarified) before being seeded, in the autumn. One section was broken up by a rotating blade (rotovated) and seeded in the autumn; the third section was rotovated and seeded in April 2022.
Rotovation has become controversial because it exposes small insects and seeds in the soil. But we’re using it on two smaller sections because it makes it easier for new seeds to establish while reducing the strength of the grass - hopefully giving us more flowers.
We hope this demonstration of three different types of management will help other groups in West Bristol and beyond who want to establish meadows.
Our volunteers have seeded the prepared ground with a mix that's ideal for bees and butterflies. They've also added plug-plants to dramatically speed up the meadow’s development dramatically, making it support wildlife faster. It will also look beautiful quicker, which will be important if the public are to accept the meadow.
There’s a grass margin around the meadow area to make it look neat, reduce fire risk, and allow for more daffodils (most of the existing ones are being kept).
A full species survey and a list of species added by WCBA is here.
Next, the floral lawn area will be cut. Volunteers will rake it and seed it with a floral lawn mix of seeds that includes selfheal, meadow buttercup, sheep’s sorrel, autumn hawkbit, bladder campion, devil’s-bit scabious, wild thyme, white clover, germander speedwell and others.
The wildflower meadow will have bare soil in some sections until February /March. The plug-plants should flower by May/June, after the daffodils have been and gone. The meadow will have long grass growing amongst the flowers and will only be mowed twice in the year.
The rest of the site will be mowed eight times a year, and volunteers will remove the cuttings.
Wildflower meadows take a while to establish. In the first year, only about a fifth of the whole bank will consist of obvious wildflowers (poppies are usually the first flowers to show). This is because many of the plants are long-living perennials that only flower after two or three years.
Over the next year or two, the grass will thin out as wildflowers start to dominate.
For the first year, the two floral lawn sections won’t look very different from the existing grass, because the flowering species will take time to establish themselves.
An important part of the project is to put up signage that explains to the public what’s going on – and brings them here, where they can learn how to copy our floral lawn or meadow in their own gardens, and/or try to get more wildflowers on unused green space in the city. We'll be getting a permanent sign soon.
How to make a meadow or floral lawn at home
We’d love it if you copied Clifton Hill and helped out lots of bees and butterflies with all that pollen. We'd recommend buying your seeds from the Avon Wildlife Trust's excellent Grow Wilder project, as we did. They created a tailored mix for us, consisting of agrimony, betony, bladder campion, common knapweed, corky-fruited water-dropwort, corn chamomile, corn marigold, corn poppy, corncockle, cornflower, crosswort, devil's bit scabious, dropwort, field scabious, greater knapweed, hedge bedstraw, kidney vetch, lady's bedstraw, meadow buttercup, meadowsweet, musk mallow, oxeye daisy, pepper saxifrage, ribwort plantain, rough hawkbit, salad burnet, selfheal, small scabious, wild marjoram, and yellow rattle.
There’s good advice on how to create a wildflower meadow and floral lawn here.
How to propose a meadow/floral lawn on council land
If there’s a piece of unused council grassland in West Bristol that you think should be wildflowered over, please get in touch with us. We now have contacts within the council for our area, and some experience in how to do it.
Things may soon change, but for now, the council have told us that the best route to put forward an area is to do so via the Parks Department’s ‘report a problem in a park or open space’ page, here.
It may help your case if you can demonstrate local support. We set up and publicised a four-week public consultation, including via posters on the site itself, and created a Google form so that people could tell us whether they were in support of a meadow, and whether they’d like to volunteer to work on it. 300 people – 99%! – were in favour of our meadow proposal, and an amazing 190 were interested in volunteering.
It may also help if you can form a group who are willing to befriend the site and organise volunteers to do some of the physical work involved. The council is short on cash and so the more that you can do to help, the better.
If you want to start your own volunteer group and work with the Parks Department, email Ella Hogg (Ella.Hogg [at] bristol.gov.uk) who is coordinating groups across the city.
To best promote flowers, the council will cut the grass once or twice a year, and volunteers will rake up the cuttings afterward. The meadow will have native wildflowers - plus non-native ones to extend the pollen season for our insect friends.
The meadow has three sections, each prepared in a different way to vary the appearance and see which works best. The ground in one section had shallow cuts made in it (scarified) before being seeded, in the autumn. One section was broken up by a rotating blade (rotovated) and seeded in the autumn; the third section was rotovated and seeded in April 2022.
Rotovation has become controversial because it exposes small insects and seeds in the soil. But we’re using it on two smaller sections because it makes it easier for new seeds to establish while reducing the strength of the grass - hopefully giving us more flowers.
We hope this demonstration of three different types of management will help other groups in West Bristol and beyond who want to establish meadows.
Our volunteers have seeded the prepared ground with a mix that's ideal for bees and butterflies. They've also added plug-plants to dramatically speed up the meadow’s development dramatically, making it support wildlife faster. It will also look beautiful quicker, which will be important if the public are to accept the meadow.
There’s a grass margin around the meadow area to make it look neat, reduce fire risk, and allow for more daffodils (most of the existing ones are being kept).
A full species survey and a list of species added by WCBA is here.
Next, the floral lawn area will be cut. Volunteers will rake it and seed it with a floral lawn mix of seeds that includes selfheal, meadow buttercup, sheep’s sorrel, autumn hawkbit, bladder campion, devil’s-bit scabious, wild thyme, white clover, germander speedwell and others.
The wildflower meadow will have bare soil in some sections until February /March. The plug-plants should flower by May/June, after the daffodils have been and gone. The meadow will have long grass growing amongst the flowers and will only be mowed twice in the year.
The rest of the site will be mowed eight times a year, and volunteers will remove the cuttings.
Wildflower meadows take a while to establish. In the first year, only about a fifth of the whole bank will consist of obvious wildflowers (poppies are usually the first flowers to show). This is because many of the plants are long-living perennials that only flower after two or three years.
Over the next year or two, the grass will thin out as wildflowers start to dominate.
For the first year, the two floral lawn sections won’t look very different from the existing grass, because the flowering species will take time to establish themselves.
An important part of the project is to put up signage that explains to the public what’s going on – and brings them here, where they can learn how to copy our floral lawn or meadow in their own gardens, and/or try to get more wildflowers on unused green space in the city. We'll be getting a permanent sign soon.
How to make a meadow or floral lawn at home
We’d love it if you copied Clifton Hill and helped out lots of bees and butterflies with all that pollen. We'd recommend buying your seeds from the Avon Wildlife Trust's excellent Grow Wilder project, as we did. They created a tailored mix for us, consisting of agrimony, betony, bladder campion, common knapweed, corky-fruited water-dropwort, corn chamomile, corn marigold, corn poppy, corncockle, cornflower, crosswort, devil's bit scabious, dropwort, field scabious, greater knapweed, hedge bedstraw, kidney vetch, lady's bedstraw, meadow buttercup, meadowsweet, musk mallow, oxeye daisy, pepper saxifrage, ribwort plantain, rough hawkbit, salad burnet, selfheal, small scabious, wild marjoram, and yellow rattle.
There’s good advice on how to create a wildflower meadow and floral lawn here.
How to propose a meadow/floral lawn on council land
If there’s a piece of unused council grassland in West Bristol that you think should be wildflowered over, please get in touch with us. We now have contacts within the council for our area, and some experience in how to do it.
Things may soon change, but for now, the council have told us that the best route to put forward an area is to do so via the Parks Department’s ‘report a problem in a park or open space’ page, here.
It may help your case if you can demonstrate local support. We set up and publicised a four-week public consultation, including via posters on the site itself, and created a Google form so that people could tell us whether they were in support of a meadow, and whether they’d like to volunteer to work on it. 300 people – 99%! – were in favour of our meadow proposal, and an amazing 190 were interested in volunteering.
It may also help if you can form a group who are willing to befriend the site and organise volunteers to do some of the physical work involved. The council is short on cash and so the more that you can do to help, the better.
If you want to start your own volunteer group and work with the Parks Department, email Ella Hogg (Ella.Hogg [at] bristol.gov.uk) who is coordinating groups across the city.
