How to grow a meadow, BBC

Royal Horticultural Society: Wildflower meadow establishment
 
 
Guidelines from River of Flowers
 
Anna Pavord in The Independent, July 2013
"...what do you do if you want a "meadow", but don't have the kind of lawn you can just allow to grow into one? Purists say you must strip the existing turf together with some of the topsoil and seed the less fertile earth underneath...

Then you need to choose a seed mixture which most closely matches your conditions (and your dreams): clay soil, dry soil, acid soil, chalk soil, spring flowering, summer flowering, hedgerow, water's edge. Mixes are made up to suit a wide variety of possibilities. Is this what I'd do? No. If I was meadow-gardening on a small scale, I'd work with what grass I'd got and plug in plants such as meadow cranesbill, cowslips, monkshood, camassia. Purists may sneer, and the end result may not be a true meadow. But the bees would be just as happy. And you will have saved yourself a lot of hard labour."

 
RSPB conference
In October 2012 the RSPB organised a conference at City Hall, London on sowing and creating wildflower and grass meadows. The presentations given by the various contriburs are available online: