Worth Park’s Wildflower Meadows Come to Life

In 2022, Euroflor Flower Seed from Accredited Supplier Origin Amenity Solutions (OAS) transformed three meadow areas within Worth Park as part of a wider conservation project underway by Crawley Borough Council.

Worth Park sits within 8.5 hectares of green space, which has undergone a complete restoration over the last few years, making it an important community and destination venue for residents and visitors to Crawley.

This experimental meadow has now been turned into works of art by a nonagenarian painter Beryl Hovell.

Beryl has tracked the development of the park’s meadow area over the past three years. She created her first artwork in 2022, at the age of 90, and has recently completed her third painting. All three paintings are on display in the Community Room at Worth Park.

Beryl explains,

"I saw the newly seeded wildflower meadow at Worth Park in 2022. What a lovely colourful sight. As an artist, it inspired me, and once that vision was in my head, I had to paint it on canvas. A year later, I painted it again. It was interesting to see the differences and variations in growth, flowers, and colours. In 2024 I saw it for the third time. Now there were more grasses and fewer flowers. When the wind caught the grasses, I loved the movement and tried to capture it in the painting with small dots of colour emerging. A photograph can capture one view, but an artist can condense a number of views into one and inject a feeling of movement that a camera cannot."

Councillor Chris Mullins, Cabinet member for Leisure and Wellbeing at Crawley Borough Council adds,

"Worth Park is a wonderful place, and Beryl’s paintings really capture the beauty of the wildflower meadow. I’m grateful to Beryl for allowing us to display her artwork in the park for visitors to enjoy."

Head Gardener and Curator at Worth Park Stephen Peters first introduced the wildflowers to increase plant diversity and provide an essential habitat and food for pollinators. He used OAS’s biodegradable matting, FloraFleece, which helped deliver maximum visual and ecological benefit with minimal environmental impact.

Stephen concludes,

"It has been a real pleasure seeing Beryl’s works of art that have followed the progress of our wildflower meadow using FloraFleece in the last three years. These paintings now hang proudly for all to see and admire. Not only do they demonstrate the evolution of the meadow but also the brilliance of the artist who captured it. At the same time, it reminds us of the beauty of meadows and how important they are for the environment and its biodiversity."