Jane Rylands-Bolton

Jane grew up in a suburban setting and learnt her love of wildflowers from her mother. As a child, she had a cheap flower press and created a scrapbook of local flora. Her husband’s childhood was also spent exploring (and causing harmless mischief in) his local environment, so by the time they were married and had moved to Lincolnshire; the natural world became home to them. Their careers were in teaching, but once they had retired and had more free time, they became Wayside Wardens for Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust. They record flora and fauna throughout the year and keep half a mile of verge in the Wolds free of litter. Road verges can be rich in wildflowers and insects when managed for wildlife. They can provide a network of corridors along which bees and other pollinators can move. Their greatest pleasure is experiencing hundreds of pyramidal orchids each year and bee orchids.