Don’t forget that the 2026 Big Meadow Search season is now under way, and will run until the end of August.  This project, started by CMG in 2021, is now a national one.  Everyone is welcome to join in, and you definitely do not need to be an expert.

All you need to do is select an area of grassland and get started. The area doesn’t need to be anything fancy or known for its rare plants as we are interested in all plant species. You are welcome to choose easy to find grasslands such as a wild garden, layby or woodland edge, it does not need to be a traditional meadow. We have used the word ‘meadow’ in the project title as we originally planned to target hay meadows but the project has developed and grown since then and we are looking at ‘meadows’ in the broadest sense. George Peterken in his book ‘Meadows’ uses the term ‘meadows on the margins’ and included road verges, churchyards, recreation grounds, orchards, woodland rides, golf course rough, riverbanks, sea cliffs and mountain ledges as ‘meadow-like grasslands’ so we have adopted a similar approach in order to capture information about a range of habitats and to give participants a broad scope of places to search.

Once you have found your site, make a note of the date, location name and grid reference. We are interested to see how long people are taking to undertake searches so if you can make a note of the time you start and finish that would be very helpful. We are also interested in the size of the area searched so we can combine this and the length of time taken to get a feel for the amount of recorder effort at each site. As it can be tricky to estimate the size of a parcel of land in terms of acreage or square metres, we have broken the search size criteria into three broad categories: tennis court size or smaller, football pitch size or smaller and larger than a football pitch size.

You can cover your chosen area in any way that you wish as we don’t have a set methodology for the searches. We want you to enjoy a slow amble around, making note of what you see as you go. If you come across plants that you can’t identify don’t worry as we don’t need a comprehensive list in order for your search efforts to be valuable. A record of even the very common species is still of interest and of use to us.

For more information, have a look at the project’s website where you can also enter your results:

https://bigmeadowsearch.co.uk

The Scythe Association of Britain and Ireland aims to promote scythe use. Its website is helpful and informative on skills, equipment, events, history and more. It can be found here:

Welcome

It publishes a newsletter – the back copies are on the website. The June 2026 Newsletter is published and will shortly be up on the site. The Green Scythe Fair takes place in Somerset 12 to 14 June 2026.

Scything – useful in so many ways. Quick and quiet for getting cutting jobs done with minimal fuss.