Meadows

George Peterken is a woodland ecologist. First at the Nature Conservancy and then as part of the Chief Scientist’s team in the Nature Conservancy Council, he led the development of national surveys of woodland and their management for nature conservation. Author of Woodland Conservation and Management and Natural Woodlands, he moved to the Lower Wye Valley some twenty years ago and subsequently wrote Wye Valley (New Naturalist). There, he found himself the owner of eight tiny meadows, founded the Parish Grassland Project and has helped other community grassland conservation initiatives.

• Foreword1 Introducing meadows2 The meadow flora3 Classification and the variety of meadows4 Origins5 Making hay the traditional way6 The geography of traditional meadows7 Improving meadows8 Diversity9 Change in the meadows10 European meadows11 Translocating meadows to the colonies12 Birds, bees, butterflies and other fauna13 Meadows in the mind14 Loss and survival15 Looking forward

...an exceptional book, Meadows ... is a proper, scientific treatise by one of Britain’s leading ecologists, but it is so well written and so spectacularly-illustrated ... that it is accessible to the general reader.