Photograph by Andrew Lawson

MIRIAM ROTHSCHILD’S WILDFLOWER SEED PROJECT

Survive Cancer is currently selling packets of wildflower seed to raise money for the Septic Shock Trial. All proceeds from the sale of these seeds go directly to the charity’s Trial Fund.

The seed mix was created by the world famous zoologist, naturalist and academic, Dame Miriam Rothschild, who became passionate about wildflower conservation and promotion.

The seed is grown and packaged at Ashton Wold, Peterborough, where Dame Miriam lived and worked, and is donated to the charity.

Packet sizes and Prices (December 2008)

• 2g = 1.99
• 10g = 7.50
• 100g = 39.50
• 1kg = 190.00

For more information or to order:

email: wildflower@ashton.ohllimited.com
Tel: +44 01832 272264

Excerpt from `Meadow Miracle’ by Mark Griffiths, who traces the remarkable story of `Miriam’s Meadows’. The full article is below.

“Dame Miriam was the great pioneer of wildflower gardening… She dared to entertain the idea (heresy in the 1970s) that is was not only beautiful but beneficial to find a corn poppy or a corn cockle lurking – like some hidden jewel – in a field of wheat. She described her conversion to `wildflower and grass gardening’, as she called it, as a `complete and drastic metamorphosis’. `One day the penny dropped and I realised with dismay that wild flowers had been drained, bulldozed, weed-killered and fertilised out of the fields and that we were now in a countryside reminiscent of a snooker table, and must do something about it.’”

Reproduced courtesy of Country Life – issue January 17th 2008.
Link: www.countrylife.co.uk for subscriptions

Excerpt from Dame Miram’s obituary:

“She campaigned to introduce wild flowers to gardens, parks and motorways, producing her own seed-mix - "Farmer's Nightmare" - for the purpose. The Prince of Wales sought her advice, and she helped to sow an extensive wild-flower meadow at Highgrove. With Clive Farrell, she wrote The Butterfly Gardener (1983), which further promoted interest in wild-flower planting. In her own garden, at Ashton Wold, near Oundle, she mingled the wild with the cultivated - speedwell with cherry blossom, tulips with ragwort - sowing wild-flower meadows in place of lawns. "I do not much care," she would say, "for living on a snooker table." Her kitchen garden was carpeted with pyramids of harebells, with banks of daisies and poppies, lupins and silverweed.”

The Telegraph online, 24th January 2005
Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1481852/Dame-Miriam-Rothschild.html

Seeds Sold by Caliban Scripts Ltd. for Survive Cancer, registered charity no: 1078066