What is River of Flowers?

The 'river' in River of Flowers is an evocative way of describing the planting of urban meadows in 'pollination streams' or 'green corridors' in order to help our pollinators, bees, butterflies and hoverflies, find forage in the city. It describes the flight path of the pollinators as much as it does the flow of wildflowers ... read more >

Image of the Week

Woodland Edge by Anne Carter Van Roy

We’d love to see more images of woodland edge wildflowers. This week's image of woodland edge wildflowers, Lesser Celandine and Dog Violet is by Anne Carter Van Roy

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Featured events

Wildlife Garden Design Course: BCTV

24/02/2012 - 09:30 - 16:30

Our Campaigns

Down Memory Lane

Mon, 16/01/2012 - 19:03

Wildflower Blog

Common Blue photographed by Lynne Kirton

As the year begins, it’s a good time to reflect on the years before and a time perhaps to ask ourselves questions that may soon not be answerable:

1. When was the last time that you walked or cycled through a cloud of butterflies?
2. Can you recall the last time you drove through the countryside and had to stop to clean the insects off your windscreen?
3. When can you last remember lying down in a meadow so full of life that the sounds of insects and birds drowned out your thoughts?
4. Where in the UK can we still find a native wild honeybee?

Native British Black bee Apis mellifera mellifera

My grandmother told me about cycling down a country lane through a cloud of blue butterflies that settled on her hair, her shoulders and the handlebars of her bicycle, and streamed behind her like an azure cloak before flying off. This was in the 1930s when she was a young girl.

My mother reminded me that driving through the Hampshire countryside twenty years ago meant frequently stopping to clear the smeared insects from her windscreen.

I last lay in a lush meadow only four years ago. The meadow in Whittington Park, London had only been created the year before but it was glorious.

Where are the last native British honeybees - please let River of Flowers know?

If you do anything in 2012, plant wild for our vanishing pollinators!

Acknowledgements

Image of Common Blue Butterfly Lynne Kirton

Image of Black British Bee The Cooperative Bank: Plan B