I learned at the weekend that it was Miriam Rothschild, the great student of fleas who, after the war, converted her lawn at Ashton Wold into a wild flower meadow, who later persuaded the Department of Transport not to cut the verges of main roads in order to allow species of wild flower to flourish. In her honour, I am posting pictures from some local parks which have been allowed to grow wild:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
In 1987 I was working on a television series with Julian Pettifer entitled ‘Nature Watch’ and we took Miriam out to Austin, Texas to film her with Lady Bird Johnson at the Texas White House (that she lived in with LBJ before he died) as she was responsible for the planting and protection of wild flowers on roadside verges and started the ‘Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’. We then had lunch in the White House with those two very formidable ladies, a day never to be forgotten!
Packets of her wild-flower seed mix were handed out at her memorial service, suitably labeled ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’.