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Britain's biggest wildflower meadow, covering 20 acres and containing tens of millions of plants, was opened today - just yards from the M25.
It is the first phase in a major conservation project called Butterfly World, designed to safeguard London's waning population of the insects.
It hosts 65 different flower species from around the world, including Californian bluebells, Mexican hats, poppies and lupins, to create a blaze of colour with 250,000 sunflowers at its centre.
The meadow, at Chiswell Green near St Albans, was created in 12 weeks. Over the next two years, it will also gradually be replanted with British wildflowers. When the project is completed in 2011 it will feature the biggest biodome in Britain, housing thousands of tropical butterflies.
The scheme is backed by naturalist David Bellamy, who said: "This is just an incredible place. You can be in the middle of a quarter of a million sunflowers and really feel like you're in a different world.
"To have it so close to the capital is amazing. Growing up in London during the war, I remember wandering around on my mother's birthday picking wildflowers, which is something you just couldn't do now. Hopefully this is somewhere where today's London children can come and do the same."
The meadow was planted using a radical method: seeds were mixed with seaweed and water and industrial equipment was used to spray the mix directly onto the soil.
"It has been like using those magic painting books that children have -spraying the seeds and waiting for it to rain to reveal the colour," said Ivan Hick, the designer and head gardener of the project. "The colour is unimaginable, like a kaleidoscope - better than I had dreamt of - and it only took 12 weeks to grow.
"This demonstrates how a wildflower meadow can flourish in a heavily polluted atmosphere. We have created an immediate nectar transfusion for the butterflies, bees and insects."
The meadow is surrounded by a butterfly carved into the chalk under the soil, a display so large it is visible from planes flying into Heathrow. Butterfly World is the brainchild of lepidopterist Clive Farrell. The insects that will live in the biodome will be bred at his butterfly farm in Belize. "I wanted to create somewhere on the M25 where people can easily come and see them," he said.
The project also includes 17 smaller plots - the size of an average back garden - to inspire people to make their own plots butterfly-friendly.
Reader views (2)
Please could you advise, am i able to visit the sunflower fields and take photographs?
- Teresa Prescott, london, uk, 27/07/2009 15:23
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Surely a wild flower meadow flourishing right next to the M25 blows apart the CO2 is a poison theory out of the the water ? I was brought p with David Bellamy and he was a national treasure. We do not see him on TV now because he disputes the science that says man is responsible for global warming. As he rightly states, plants and trees breathe co2 they need it to survive. The more co2 the bigger and faster they grow. The more they grow the more O2 then produce. It is just that science has been replaced by a pseudo religion where dissenters are treated like heretics!
- Duncan Walker, Ex Peckham now Thailand, 27/07/2009 14:23
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