Flower power: Rotherham's derelict wasteland turns into a river of beauty

There's more than one way to care for a berm. Photo / supplied

In the English town of Rotherham, in Yorkshire, there was a lot of derelict land. Waste expanses awaiting development, abandoned parks near housing projects, long barren strips beside the roads, dull grassed areas around many large commercial and educational buildings. People used them as a tip, and they got up to other "antisocial behaviour" too.

So the council called in an outfit called Pictorial Meadows, which was linked to the Department of Landscape at the University of Sheffield and had done some impressive work for the 2012 London Olympics. The company designed Rotherham some flower gardens.

Not just any old flower gardens. The idea, says Professor Nigel Dunnett, was to bring colour on a large scale to public landscapes, with very little money. Something that would be "really reliable and looked fantastic". The gardens had to remain in flower from early spring to late summer, for the visual impact and to keep the bees coming back to pollinate.

The company developed a "PM Turf" range with names like Purple Haze and Woodland Edge. Natives and non-natives are mixed together. They established a rigorous seed-testing programme, for purity and germination rates. An "abandoned and abused landscape" in "the worst estate in Britain" has become the company's oldest – and most beautiful – test site.

Some plots are annual, others have been stocked with perennials. "We take the concept of a traditional wildflower meadow," says the company's Sue James, "and make it super. Supernature."

A Rotherham housing estate and the meadow that used to be derelict. Photo / supplied

Residents in the housing estates say they never want to go back to grass. The council joined in the fun, commissioning a "river of flowers" along 13 km of berms and roundabouts. People loved it and, the council proudly boasts, their maintenance bill has dropped by £25,000 [$47,000] a year.

"It's flower power that captures the imagination," they like to say.

As well as the housing estates, an industrial car park has been transformed, the grounds of a university, motorway medians, business parks. It's a bit of a movement now, with other towns and cities joining in. In the northern town of Hartlepool, the council commissioned 23,000sq m of highway flowers and received, they say, "a barrage of compliments".

It's not just pretty flowers. These urban meadows function as rain gardens, filtering roadside surface water and helping to reduce flash flooding. And developers now have the confidence to build homes in areas they thought would remain derelict.

Rotherham's river of flowers. Photo / supplied

Design for Living is a regular series in Canvas magazine.