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.

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

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.