Railways and their immediate surroundings provide the perfect environment for the proliferation of many and varied species of flora and vegetation.

Over the course of the history of railways, a unique flora has grown up along Britain's railway network, able to survive with the sharp drainage of railway embankments and cuttings, and in particular a century or more of ash that creates a growing medium more akin to the slopes of a volcano. Track beds have therefore naturally evolved into profuse ‘breeding grounds’ for a fascinating array of plants, many of which flower to create a gloriously colourful backdrop to our network of rails, flanking the busy stretches still in use and rambling over the sleepers of now disused routes.

Ash-rich soil also promotes the endurance many species which would not normally cope with harsh British winters in ordinary soil; hence the abundance of such classic ‘railway plants’ as the long-plumed ‘Buddleja’ and ‘Oxford Ragwort’ whose fluffy seeds have spread and flourished into gloriously sunny flowers across tracks nationwide after being first imported at the ‘Oxford Botanic Gardens’.

Not content to just let ‘nature take its course’, so many gorgeous stations assist the ‘ferrovial floral feast’ by adorning platforms, canopies and fascias with wonderful displays. On many a occasion, our OTRBOT eyes have been welcomed, on arrival at a station, by the cheerful sight of lovingly created and tended hanging baskets and a delightful selection of floral receptacles ranging from wooden wheel-barrows and railway carriages to locomotive-shaped, wrought iron flower pot holders!

We do hope you enjoy perusing our gallery of 'OTRBOTany', a celebration of the rich and diverse natural beauty surrounding our railways and an appreciation of the enthusiastic (and often voluntary) ‘helping hands’ of legions of station gardeners!