The second volume of a major new series of books on British natural history.
Meadows provide one of the most wide-ranging and eloquent treatments of this most quintessential British habitat. Yet the flower-rich hay meadows that have inspired writers and artists for hundreds of years have almost disappeared from our countryside.
In this exceptional work, George Peterken, one of our most respected ecologists, brings together years of research and discovery from his travels across Britain and Europe, as well as an understanding borne out of caring for his own meadows, to produce a book that will put this often misunderstood habitat back in the public's eye. Filled with beautiful images of meadows and their denizens, this is a book everyone with an interest in this iconic habitat will want to own.

Working with the Nature Conservancy and its successors, George Peterken started the ancient woodland inventory, and helped negotiate the nature conservation aspects of the Government's 1985 Broadleaves Policy, which he later worked to implement in his role as nature conservation adviser at the Forestry Commission. His research interests, which have centred on nature conservation, natural woodland and long-term and large-scale aspects of woodland ecology, benefited from a Bullard Fellowship at Harvard University. George's early books included Woodland Conservation and Management (1981) and Natural Woodland (1996), before he changed direction to write Wye Valley (2008) in the New Naturalist series and Meadows (2013) for the British Wildlife Collection. More recently, he has returned to woodlands to co-write Woodland Development: a long-term study of Lady Park Wood (2017) and Art meets Ecology (2020). Born into a New Forest family, he now lives in the Lower Wye Valley. He was awarded an OBE for services to forestry in 1994.

Foreword
1 Introducing meadows
2 The meadow flora
3 Classification and the variety of meadows
4 Origins
5 Making hay the traditional way
6 The geography of traditional meadows
7 Improving meadows
8 Diversity
9 Change in the meadows
10 European meadows
11 Translocating meadows to the colonies
12 Birds, bees, butterflies and other fauna
13 Meadows in the mind
14 Loss and survival
15 Looking forward