Through a kissing gate, into an old meadow of gently undulating humps and hollows, like the long swell on a calm green ocean. A hare, startled by the clang of the gate, lollops away into the hedge.
In the far corner, abandoned among nettles on a rabbit warren, there’s an old rusting hay tedder. Its wiry whirligig wheels, spinning behind a tractor, finally came to rest here one summer day after turning its last windrow, the air heavy with the coumarin scent of sun-dried, new-mown hay. I can imagine the farmer eyeing clouds on the horizon, saying a silent prayer that dry weather will last long enough for the crop to be baled and gathered in.
Haymaking is still three months away, but there’s vibrant new growth under my feet. As soon as the days lengthened and temperatures rose, wild flowers began staking their claim to vacant spaces among the grasses: pushing, shoving, smothering, reaching for light. Unfolding trifoliate leaves of clover are creeping over bare patches of earth scuffed by sheep. New shoots of germander speedwell thread their way between expanding leaf rosettes of dandelions, docks and plantains that, in turn, shoulder aside interlaced new foliage of wood cranesbill, buttercup and sorrel. Seedlings of yellow rattle – the meadow maker, parasitising grassroots – weaken their hosts.
Our finest northern hay meadows host upwards of a hundred plant species. This field is less floristically diverse, likely home to about half that number, but the plant that catches my eye this morning is lady’s mantle, whose pleated, serrated leaves are shaped like cloaks worn by fashionable Victorian ladies. The soft, hairy foliage is spangled with overnight dew, glittering diamonds in early morning sunlight. Its scientific name, Alchemilla, the “little alchemist”, speaks of the ancient belief that those glistening droplets could turn base metals into silver. Fanciful, but there is a kind of alchemy at work in old hay meadows, the product of centuries of annual cycles of mowing, grazing the aftermath, then spreading just enough muck to replenish lost nutrients; an almost magical bargain between nature and nurture.
Add nitrogenous fertilisers and the precarious balance would shift and wild flower diversity would dwindle, submerged in a sea of rampant grasses.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
