Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick for another one of our, podcasts all about sustainability. We're doing these as a whole series, really, up to COP 26. It's a real pivotal time in history.

We've got a real opportunity as as the host of this to make a difference, and, and I think obviously. We can do that via government, but it's also individuals doing their little bit, and it doesn't need to be a lot, but everybody making that little bit of a difference will make a huge difference. Having said that today, I've got somebody who I think in fairness, has made a huge difference already.

Richard Scott is. I think he's Doctor Wildflower meadow, and I've been getting very excited about wildflower meadows. In fact, I've grown my own wildflower meadow this year, both at home and in the office, using seeds that Richard probably actually harvested last year, from Rimrose Valley, which is a a a big site not far from where I am.

An old rubbish tip that's been turned into a a a little mini paradise. So we'll be talking about that a bit later. And Richard originally did an ecology degree at the University College London and was very influenced in his early days in London by the great work that Ken Livingstone was doing on Eco Parks.

He then managed to find a job in, in the, the sort of the capital of, of, of England in, in the North West, working for a charity called Land Life that eventually morphed into the National Wildflower Centre, which was based in the in the, well, just off Queen's Drive in Liverpool, there's actually a place that I almost bought a house in, but that never happened in the end. And. The National Wildfire Centre has actually been transferred over the last couple of years to the Eden Project, which I was very pleased to visit again during the summer, the fantastic work that they're doing there.

And, and Richard works in collaboration with the Eden Project and also the Liverpool Life Museum because, I, I think all of this work that we're doing on regeneration and biodiversity also has to have a huge education element as well as a practical element. Thrilled to have you here, Richard, you have been doing such great work I know over, over, I, I'm gonna give your age away over decades, but I mean, wildflower meadows are becoming trendy now, but it's the old story of, nobody is ever a, a, an overnight success, are they? This is something that's been going on in the shadows for the last 1020 years, cos of course.

If we go back to, you know, the end of the Second World War, I believe we've we've lost something ridiculous like 97% of wildflower meadows and farmland. Do you think that we're starting to see a resurgence, but almost a resurgence in urban areas that are, that is taking the lead before perhaps the ruralists? I think that's the case, and I think it's, it's because, I suppose it's to do with culture and creativity really and .

Because there were always people, and that was my first witness who were eager to bring nature into the city, in the same way as urban farms, you know, that wonderful urban farms movement, it was that kind of social connection with nature, which, to be honest, the, you know, like the bigger conservation organisations. Were good at, good, good at really, and I remember the Countryside Commission when I first started, it was the Countryside Commissioner rather than the Countryside Agency. You couldn't apply for grants unless you were in view of the open countryside.

So little outfits like land life you were kind of They'd been knocked over by what they saw in Holland actually, which dated back to 1927. They went and witnessed stuff in like Amsterdam. Wonderful I still being in the suburbs.

Public nature people have been doing this kind of stuff on the polar lands, you know, reclaimed from the sea. And it was like, well why is nobody doing that here? So it is about incremental steps, it's about learning and it's about things, you know, being out of people's radar.

And then seeing is believing. And it's one of these things that's been a gentle momentum. I suppose there's been, you know, I, I've seen, you know, sort of rises and then plateaus, and then rises and plateaus.

So it's gone in little steps, but I think we have, because of what's needed, you know, like, people are really hungry for it and know that it's the right thing to do. But it's also wonderful and it's also. Should be the most livable part of of of cities and urban areas, but the wonderful thing is we can share these lessons and putting nature back in the countryside because it's the same thing.

Nature knows knows absolutely no boundaries, never has, you know. And, and the beauty there, you know, having visited earlier on in the summer, you know, somebody giving away a, a, a large space just to revert back, you know, without management . Nature can actually regenerate very quickly if it's given the chance, can't it?

Can, yeah, and I've never been to NEP so I envy that. I've seen the presentations, and I think there's a wonderful overlap between these two things, and so people like, you know, I met in Liverpool and you know the wonderful Tony Bradshaw and Grant Waski I work with that land like. You know, they, they were picking up on those kind of observations on railway sidings.

I remember Tony Bradshaw, I, I went and saw them later myself, but, you know, in Berlin, the gaps between the walls, you know, the, those, you know, those spaces. I mean people talked about Famaguta in Cyprus that was just fenced off and left for like. Chernobyl has obviously as well, hasn't it?

So nature can always do that, but it's, it's, it's surprising how, how few times people have actually witnessed it and then acted upon it in terms of, yeah. So, you know, there's a, I, I read a report actually only yesterday, which relates to the nep experience, but there was a tiny experiment at Monk's Wood, which was the home of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, which people had forgotten about. And it was just a field that was left in 1961 and and actually monitored quite.

Closely, you know, and that's pretty much like an oak woodland now, you know, from what the Jays brought, you know, the, and of course the Eden Project, you know, was just disused or, or soon to be disused clay pits, wasn't it? That is, that is the wonderful thing. It's the, it's again the starting point of what's possible.

So that was the barest china clay waste, no nutrients. People struggle to get anything to grow on it. And they, you know, like, a great guy called Tony Kendall, who worked with Tony Bradshaw here in Liverpool actually.

He did his PhD with Tony Bradshaw, and it was about manufacturing the soil on the spot to enable all those things to happen in the domes and then they were compost, it was compost rather than manufactured specially for that project based on. About the soil and what was needed really. So the where the where there's a will there's a way, and I loved your wildflower meadow at Eden Project.

Those of you obviously who are listening who don't know what the Eden Project is, it, it's set up about 20 years ago, in in in a clay pit and . They actually have big domes where they try and show rainforest and the Mediterranean er set up so people can go round those and actually it's, it's worrying when you hear, and I can't remember the exact stat, but you know a a a tennis court of of woodland is lost. You know, every few seconds, isn't it, and it is a concern, but it, it, you know, it's great to see, the work that Land Life and National Wildflower Meadow have done, and I think I remember as a young boy, the garden festival was a was a big marquee event that happened in the regeneration of Liverpool really, and I, I think.

Land Life won the prize for the best garden, didn't they? Prize of honour. It's like, and, Grant, actually, who, still see regularly, has, has still got the glass bowl, this beautiful glass crystal bowl for the prize of honour.

But that, I mean, people have forgotten, but it was voted by the Landscape Institute, in the late 90s as the most influential piece of landscape in, in Britain in the 20th century. Wow, you know, people forget, but it did influence the Eden Project, the idea of a permanent garden festival, and all the money over 2 billion pounds that that's brought to Cornwall, . But you know, apparently over 3 million people visited the garden festival in 1984, which was a fantastic summer.

So it's got a very special affection, memories. But sadly we didn't make the most of it at the time. No, and it, it's sort of bits were turned into housing, there's still a few remnant bits that hopefully they can be.

Rejuvenated. I know there is all around Liverpool, thanks to the great work of the, the Metro mayor. He's been giving grants out and in fact my wife, who is a teacher at a local North Sefton school actually got some money to, to put some off the land.

They have quite good playing fields and they've they've actually planted some wildflower meadows with, with varying degrees of success and bee gardens and everything to try and improve biodiversity. Give the kids a chance to see nature and if, if they can fall in love with nature, they're gonna be more respectful of, of the environment and less likely to fly tip and do all those silly things that's exactly that, and we've been working in that area actually through North Liverpool from Everton Park, which is a great, another great flagship, which has got, which, you know, got Ques England wildflowers flagship officially that that we won that by public vote actually, but it was that was fantastic and it was linked to work in Manchester, but. Over the past year we've been extending the work from North Liverpool through Sefton with a project called Head North, which is all about, which is funded by the Liverpool City region, and that is connecting, working with Regenerist as partners and taking roots.

And housing association, so it's, it's, it's, it's linking housing association land, some, you know, spaces in, in, in the boroughs in terms of some of the city land in Liverpool, but with groups like tourists and ocean housing. It's, it's green living isn't it, we can actually live. More in tune with nature than perhaps we we realise.

And wonderful comments actually from some of those residents in, in, in those places in terms of witness from their window, you know. I know you're also working with my old school All Saints in Anfield, which also had a visit from er Prince William that was on a programme. He was featured in that sort of this special, David Attenborough actually it was great.

I mean an amazing school. Yeah. It it's a, it's a great school and of course not in necessarily the most affluent of areas, but that sort of colour brings life to people, doesn't it, if it's you know, an area that maybe is a bit depressed in various ways.

The joy of seeing the bees and and seeing the flowers and the butterflies can be really uplifting, can't it? Well, that park, particularly they they highlighted and wanted to extend their work into is Themere Park, and I was really delighted to be there, . Earlier in the year, or, or last year actually, and then subsequently visiting it was more and more obvious, but a guy ran out the houses from the back of the terraces and said, Have you got anything to do with this?

Because I've never seen so many birds as I've seen this last year, and the, you know, insects and stuff. And it was true, you know, the, the sparrows, which, you know, a lot of people have been worried about are reappearing. They're coming, and it's about insects and seed, you know, both food sources that the sparrows need really.

And the pandemic, I think, and the, the isolation has made people realise perhaps. How much they need nature, but also perhaps made them a bit more observant, so they're spotting things like the sparrows and the goldfinchs that previously they were too busy to, to see. It's given people time to observe, hasn't it?

Yeah, definitely. I'm gonna be extremely selfish now because as I say, I've planted a little bit of a wildflower meadow in the back of my yard, it's just on a raised bed, so it's a very small area. But also as Webinar vet, we've actually planted Wildflower meadow at the Science Park and we got some plugs and things.

Obviously, you know, we're we're recording this podcast in the middle of September. And and in fact I almost met you. This week at Rimrose, where I saw a very large vehicle harvesting from, from the track there or from the middle of the track.

So perhaps tell us a little bit about the process of one, maybe starting from the beginning. Somebody wants to, to grow a wildflower meadow, what are the tips, what are the, the obvious things that you should do and what are the mistakes that you commonly see people making so that we can perhaps help avoid some of that. Well, there are, you know, the commonest mistake is .

You know, people just throw it into the grass really and to be honest with the best country in the world to grow grass or probably maybe Ireland's just a little you know, they're pretty good at growing grass and the thing is, it's about competition and . Plants like freedom, like all of us, we need space, so if you throw a simple small seed of of, which is actually quite valuable and precious in terms of what a wildflower seed represents. You aren't really giving it much chance if you throw it into a place where everything's growing really well.

And literally it's just he hasn't got spaces. It, it's not, if it germinates, it's never gonna have a chance. So it is about.

Soil, you know, and, and the, the interesting thing is it's not just soil, the, the best substrates are things like, you know, we, we'll extol Mersey grit, for example, which is, you know, the dredges of the Mersey, but you know like. Crush concrete and all these other things which people would think mad, the sustainable landscapes, these are the things that would be really interesting because wildflowers do better. Generally where the soil's poorer, that's where you see them in the mountains and on the cliff tops on our coasts, .

And that's where there's a wonderful connection to the way we can roll these through cities and fit in with . You know, like pop up meadows and, yeah, and for example, they knocked the flyover down in Liverpool. Well, really, that should be used, be used, it could be ground up and the perfect carbon capture meadow, for, because the, the, the carbon, the concrete itself when it's made, you know, obviously produces carbon dioxide, but the opposite is the case when you recycle these substrates.

It's the carbonation. The reaction with the air is actually taking carbon dioxide out, so we shouldn't be using topsoil if we can't help it. But wildflower seed basically needs bare ground and a chance to, to develop.

and that, that needs a little time, so don't throw it in the grass, you know, we sometimes heard the people, you know, throwing them into football pitches and things like that and thinking, you know, and it, it wastes, not, it wastes time, but it, and, and people then get disappointed and it hasn't worked, and they won't try again. So it's important you do the right thing, so. And, and sewing, obviously, I sewed because this was the time in the spring, but I believe actually sewing in the autumn is, is better than sewing in the spring, isn't it?

Well, the best, the best thing is, it's like, it's when seeds really start to drop. So when people say the autumn, it probably pushes it a little bit too late. There's some things that actually do well for the bit of frost and weathering over the winter, which, for example, cowslips like a, like cool weather, they need a frost almost.

But so, you know, like August and September are actually really good times to be sowing seed, and if you get into October, it starts to, I know the the they're getting warmer, every month's getting warmer, but. It, you know, they get a chance before the winter to establish. So if you want them to flower earlier next year, it's a better chance.

Brilliant. But you can do it. Is there a value when you're, you know, sowing a meadow, obviously that's going to often kind of start maybe April.

April May go through till, you know, September or October time. Do you favour, adding bulbs into the same space like cro and snowdrops or which would come, you know, in the early spring. I mean, I love snowdrops, personally, I'd be a great fan of snowdrops, but all bulbs add variety and fit in with meadows perfectly, you know, they're, they're all sight in you know, in.

The Court a Park, there's an area in the wetland area at the back of one of the ponds that we planted with fertilleries and it, you know, sort of fantastic. We, we have a lot of bluebells in my front garden, but I was, interested to read that then they don't really attract as many insects as you would think the bluebell, do they? Probably not, no, probably not as many insects, it's, it's .

No, that's true. So how would you, in the harvesting. It's cutting them down and leaving them to lie there and then picking them up or they're all a little bit different, but essentially, you know, you don't want to pick them when they're green, so for example, the cor marigold, which she was harvesting at Rimrose the other day, you, you would see, and it's, you know, it's about, again, observation and experience.

If you rub them with your hand, you know, you can see the seeds, separate loosely in your hand, and are well ripened. Because if you pick them too early, they, you know, they won't, they won't germinate. So, and, and it's the same with all things.

You, you, we kind of, you know, you develop that sense of, are they ready yet? So you rub the corn flour between your fingers and the, the little pods will open and you can see that the seeds well formed. And all seeds are different.

Some are microscopic poppy seeds. You, you know, it's about 10,000 seeds per gramme, something like field scabious is like 150 seeds per gramme. So big differences, but the principle is, you know, for example, if you're picking field scabious.

You know, you can see their seeds fattened and they're nicely yellowed. You know, they, they could turn a lovely yellow oaky colour. And we put Fiskevius in in March and it's not flowered at all.

So you just, you won't, you'll leave that. Well, you, you'll find that that'll develop it, I, I guess it's probably developed a kind of quite nice rosette. Yes, and then next year you'll have a like a, a lovely.

You know, exuberance, you know, spreading plants really. But some things as perennial plants, they take 2 years, so we. Like a lot of the areas people might have seen in Liverpool this year, we start with the annuals, but we'll sow with perennials too.

So that means there's things like red Campion and buttercup and oxide daisies coming through. But we don't sow any grass because, you know, like, it's the grass will come anywhere. And again, we want to free them from that period where, because what does grass do if you've ever sown a lawn, the grass will .

Germinate really, really quickly, and again it takes up the space too fast, particularly on richer soils and sadly a lot of those mixtures with which are, you know, 80% grass, they're sown on rich soils. They might, they might look OK in 2, you know, year 2 and 3, but probably by year 5, they'll be all grass and the wildflowers have faded away again. So.

But as you said, you need poor soil, so presumably as you cut, you need to remove that to take that matter off the no, it's again it's freedom and if you don't want the, that vegetation to mulch down, so, you know, if you, if you can't, if you can't remove the cuttings, which stops that kind of mulching effect. At least chop it really finely so that it doesn't swamp it too much. And the worms will take, you know, a fair bit of worms are wonderful things, but, you know, old traditional hay meadows, they, they cut them for the hay, obviously took the hay away.

And in actual fact, those kind of meadows, the wild flowers were there as like a kind of happy accent, you know. Farmers were managing it in this traditional way, but they would cut the hay. And then they would graze the field really heavily, like what they call the aftermath, when it was fresh and green.

And because of all the disturbance from the hooves and the poaching of the animals in the fields, that always gave the accidental spaces for the wild flowers to kind of keep coming back. So that's why these traditional hay meadows were so fantastic because they had this traditional management which gave these wildflowers, diverse wildflowers, what they needed. And of course at the end of the Second World War, people began to see those flowers.

Or as weeds, so herbicides obviously killed the flowers, but didn't harm the grass. So when we see agriculture and fertiliser as well. So improvements, you know, phosphate, particularly more than nitrogen, actually, it's, it, it put paid for, you know, again, the grass just took charge and they also res sowed these areas with .

So when you travel through Cheshire for example, it's a lot of short lays, you know, Italian ryegrasses. Yeah. And those fields, there's very, very little there, you know.

And, and just from the perspective of, you know, you've sown your meadow, maybe in the autumn, and then obviously it starts growing in the springtime. And, you know, how should you cut that? Should you cut it in the early springtime before they've.

It's fine. I think sometimes if you give if you give more light, the better, you know, in terms of if you sow them with annuals though, you just have to be a little bit careful because the annuals are more sensitive for cutting. So you you probably need to be a bit more sensitive in the first year if you sown with annuals because you want the annuals to have their run.

And they will fade away as the as the programmes come out, so but in the second year. In actual fact, you can be pretty harsh, the harsher you are, and the it it stimulates this kind of poaching effect that you get in these old fashioned meadows, basically. And then you cut, as you were doing this week in in the sort of September time, to harvest and even before that, to be honest, I mean we're interested in the seed more than most people.

But often traditionally they were they were interested in the hay weren't they? Yeah, so it was usually mid July actually. I mean when I got first interested in the Meadows when I was at university.

And I remember making a big expedition to find this particular meadow and thinking I'd be getting there. No, that's, that's brilliant. I'm, I'm always cheeky on on podcasts, Richard, so I'm gonna be cheeky.

Could, could you potentially give us. A small amount, but maybe 10 packets of seeds that we can actually offer to first come, first served. If you email me as Anthony at the webinar vet.com, you know, and you're a veterinary practise and you maybe want to have these in in and around your veterinary practise, cos it was really interesting, we had Craig Bennett on a few weeks ago who's the CEO of the wildlife Trusts.

And he was saying how vets are looked up to in the community, and they were doing some good stuff, and I know PDSA in in Kirkdale have got a wildflower meadow as well. That actually rubs off on the community because people, you know, do trust vets, they know that we care about animals, so. That would be absolutely great, Richard, if you could do that.

And perhaps just to finish, you know, maybe one or two other tips on how we as as vets, you know, can think more sustainably. I think, I think it's this thing about being aware of, of like the circular economy of your location. So there's one way is being aware of things that are particularly cherished in terms of local distinction and and sometimes, you know, that, that becomes apparent over time, but and sometimes it might not exist, so it's a question of creating this element of pride, but.

I would say that the starting point, going back to that is the most critical thing, so. You know, you want to pass on the experience that's good experience, like, you know, a good vet would do, I know, in terms of their own experience, it's it's your lifetime, isn't it, really, in terms of what you, you know, put together and what you learn from other people. So it is about looking for these spaces, which might not seem obvious, which which could be very close to, you know, like people.

So, you know, there's a PDSA which we mentioned briefly before, before we started in. Near Stockbridge Village, where we did a meadow at the back of there, and we actually scraped the soil off, topsoil off and sold the soil. And the wonderful thing about that environment is it was, it actually cost nothing to do at the time because it was a completely virtuous circle, and that I would argue is one of the best meadow creations you will find in the UK.

Greatly undervalued, it's in terms of people who've seen it. More people should know about it, but it's the simplicity of that. So for example, if you've got a development on your side and you're moving topsoil or if you've got an area of bare ground, there might be in a garage or something like that.

You could just put layers of things like Mersey grit or granular sands, even brownfield substrates, you know, like if you and the thing is get a mosaic of different materials, and that's habitat, that's diversity in terms of the pH and all these other things. But it gives you much more opportunity for variety for insects in terms of the warmth and the crevices. It becomes a very much more diverse environment rather than being just one standard piece of standard soil.

So the more you could, maybe you can start and do this kind of patchwork effect, it doesn't have to be big, but you can keep adding to it. It's a, it's, that's a wonderful lesson of urban ecology, it's this kind of patchwork effect. And it's always the same, you know, if you look at Heathland ecology, for example, it's, it's, it's these patchworks of heathland that are being managed in different ways that ultimately means there's different age structures and things and different, it's not homogeneous.

So you, you know, includes structural diversity in terms of what surrounds it, in terms of the way you plant it too. But you can start, it's starting on a journey and then you can make it more complex, so it's, it's great to start with the annuals, and you can do that on a piece of, you know, topsoil, and then you can start to add something every year and it's this incremental path. Which I've always liked the tortoise beats the hair thing, but you know, that's it's the steady plod which will, you know, change the world.

And that's what nature is like, as you say, the Eden Project over 20 years has developed, so has NEP as well. But nature kind of knows best as well, doesn't it? It's been doing a good job for millions of years.

You know, and exchange the seed, you know, like, swap stories with other people, you know, that's when it becomes really fascinating because. We've found, you know, we worked with lots of parks groups and friends groups and those kinds of things, but. Now it's, I think there's a sense of like, everybody's lonely, more than ever, you know, and now suddenly there's the recognition that green space is, is hugely important in terms of mental health.

But it should be updated beyond, you know, that Victorians knew that that was the, you know, the green long for cities. But we know so much more about ecology now, in terms of what we can do, so it should be part of the standard thing of what a park can be. And everybody can do a little bit, you know, and even a, you know, even a garden as well, we can set aside something for, for wildfires, can't we?

Now biochar is an interesting one because, you know, we had a patron as a patron, James Lovelock, he's 102 now. So he was, you know, he helped. He remembers the meadows.

Yeah, well, but the interesting thing was he said the most important thing anybody could do, he thought was to put. Basically carbon in the soil, 80% of terrestrial carbon is in the soil. So if you start to mix, biochar or charcoal with things like crushed concrete and stuff like that, you're actually locking carbon.

And we, we would be pumping carbon into the soil. If we were doing this as a national thing, we should be pyralizing our food waste and pushing it into the soil, and that's what would pump carbon out of the atmosphere. But do, you know, there's a whole other things, but it isn't just about planting trees, you know, it's meadows capture carbon, salt marshes capture carbon, and yeah, brilliant.

Yeah. Richard, it's been so interesting. Thank you so much because I know you're very busy for, for giving you time and pleasure, and I really love these kind of connections, it's, it's, it's what it's about.

You always learn by talking to other professions, it's like it makes you think about things you'd have never have thought of, you know. Brilliant. Thanks again.

All right, take care, everybody.