Growing a meadow

[weepingwillow22]

All the houses in our road have a small piece of grass behind our gardens which our covenants say we are not allowed to fence or garden. Our neighbours all mow the bits they own behind their houses but I fancy making ours into a meadow with lots of flowers and insects.

Does anyone have any tips of how to create a really pretty meadow? I have attached a photo, it currently has little white flowers and buttercups but not much else. Should I just scatter some seed, if so when and what flowers? Also when and how often should I mow it. There are currently long tailed tits nesting in the grass.

Picture 1) If the broad leaves in the centre are soft and downy, then it's Yorkshire fog. The purple flower I can't see well enough, but it looks like bugle, but seems too small; if it's not bugle, it's one of the speedwells. The going-over flower head could be sweet vernal grass. And there's some creeping buttercup leaves.

2. That looks very like Yorkshire fog. The white flower is too out of focus. The plant in the background, with its leaves in little whorls around the stem, as a bedstraw, Galium sp.

3. the beautiful blue flower is germander speedwell, Veronica chamaedrys

4. The little white flower is I think common mouse ear, Cerstaium fontanum, the country cousin of snow-in-summer

5. You have the Galium again in that picture. I'm not sure it is goosegrass (Galium aparine), I think it might be one of the others. The flowers look too white. Are the leaves and stems covered in little hooks to the whole plant is sticky like velcro? If not very velco-ish, then not goosegrass.

6. That may be a meadow buttercup, going from the leaves. The two most likely are creeping and meadow. If you look at the flower stems, creeping buttercup has ribbed stems, meadow buttercup has smooth round stems. (Bulbous buttercup also has ribbed stems, but that has reflexed sepals - the green bits surrounding the petals are folded back against the stem.)