Meadows

Description

Meadows, the second volume of a major new series of books on British natural history, provides 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.

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.

...an exceptional book, Meadows ... is a proper, scientific treatise by one of Britain's leading ecologists, but it is so well written and so spectacularly-illustrated ... that it is accessible to the general reader. -- Michael McCarthy * The Independent *