Meadow Match is our wildflower meadow ‘dating agency’, matchmaking existing sites of wildflower seed and hay with new sites to create more flower-rich habitat. Meadow Match is run by Wildflower Collective our not-for-profit company. Working in collaboration with the University of Exeter and Then Try This we have started to design a Meadow Matching database to help us scale up and create even more meadows across Cornwall, Devon and the Isles of Scilly.
Step 1. Know what information you need to help match meadows
We just find meadows and then match them up, right?
Well it’s not quite that straight-forward, we have lost 97% of our wildflower meadows in living memory so this is a big challenge! We have to first find ‘donor’ sites, these are wildflower-rich sites that could be used to harvest seed or hay. Then we need to find the perfect match or ‘receptor’ site. To find the perfect match we need to collect information (aka data) on both the ‘donor’ and ‘receptor’ site conditions e.g. soils, plant species, location, management history, future site plans, and practical site access (is the gate wide enough for a harvester!?).
These data can take a while to collect and often require a professional ecologist to visit the site. To help us store, manage and then match data on our sites we need a database!
Step 2. Create a structure for your meadow match information
Once we know what information (aka data) we need, we can then create a data structure, one that minimises duplicated information and allows updating, archiving and links to reports as we get new sites and survey results in.
With over 200 sites already in our database and with the project growing across the South West we have been working with Dr Ros Shaw at the University of Exeter and Dave and Amber Griffiths at Then Try This to help build a database structure that can be used easily and be scaled up as we get more and more meadow sites matching.
The team have helped us understand and visualise the data we need to collect and how best to structure this database. You can see the full Then Try This blog with diagrams of the database and interface. With hundreds of sites which may have data over several years this could become quite a tangle! Luckily we have projects underway to help us test run the new database.
Step 3. Test and trial your meadow match structure!
Thanks to the expertise of the team we have now transformed our simple MS Excel spreadsheet into an MS Access database that we can test and trial through our Meadow Match project with our partners at Rosuick Organic Farm. We’ll be creating 30 ha of new species-rich grassland in the next year across 4 areas of Cornwall’s Protected Landscape giving us the chance to put the new database through its paces.
The team have also created a prototype interface (front end to the database) using the Wireframe sketches by Then Try This and the open source software R Shiny so Meadow Matchers can find and see matches on a website map. We have also created our first meadow matching algorithm to start testing! Wildflower Collective will be further developing these through the project.
Step 4. Repeat! Make changes – go back to Step 2!
Through testing and trailing with landowners and partners on the Meadow Match project we can see if we’ve missed anything and if anything needs changing from our structure and interface. We’ll be doing this in spring 2024 ready for our next stage of the project.
But why are we sharing our meadow matching ‘secret recipe’?
We believe in open-source research and therefore everything from this collaboration so far has been published on the basis of a Creative Commons Attribution and Share Alike licence- so others are welcome to learn from and adapt our research as long as they share what they do with it, what they have changed and credit the original work. More info on CC BY SA licence.
What is Meadow Match?
Meadow Match is our wildflower meadow ‘dating agency’, matchmaking existing sites of wildflower seed and hay with new sites to create more flower-rich habitat in Cornwall Devon and the isles of Scilly. Meadow Match is run by Wildflower Collective our not-for-profit company.
Since 2019, Meadow Match has helped create over 57 hectares (the equivalent of 57 rugby pitches), of new wildflower-rich habitat and is supporting the National Trust, the Duchy of Cornwall Estates, Cornwall Wildlife Trust, Cornwall Council and many private landowners and farmers to become ‘receptor’ sites of this vital wildflower seed.
This Meadow Match Database project was run by Dr Grace Twiston-Davies, Prof Juliet Osborne and Dr Ros Shaw in collaboration with Then Try This and funded by the Open Innovation Platform Fund at the University of Exeter.