Strategy for a meadow

[A_T]

I am lucky enough to have a meadow next to my house. For some years I have rented it out to sheep who eat everything except nettles and thistles and attracted a lot of flies. It also has some tress in it - ash, birch, willow, apple trees. This year no sheep and I have mowed selectively to allow areas to to play with the dogs. As well as the thistles there is a lot of yarrow, knapweed, grass, clover, some ragwort. I am on the North Wales/Shropshire border so the varieties of butterfly I see is limited but this year we have had orange-tips, the whites, meadow browns, commas, gatekeepers, speckled woods - all you would expect to see as well as recently a small copper.

Can anyone suggest a strategy for encouraging wildlife especially butterflies? I no longer have any intention of renting it out for livestock. In particular are there any seeds worth sowing?

[Mark Senior]

See the links in my recently posted thread " How many men should mow a meadow " .

[JohnR]

It may be that the best thing I did for my meadow was to plant a hedge along one boundary. In three years the hedge, which consists of thorn and berried hedging, has this year become shelter for butterflies and the numbers in both the fields divided by the hedge have been amazing. I am going to repeat this as an experiment on my neighbour's land.