Donald MacIntyre obituary

Ecological restoration in Britain owes an enduring debt to my friend Donald MacIntyre, a botanist, farmer and quiet innovator whose life’s work was to bring native wildflowers back into the landscape on a national scale. Through the founding of Emorsgate Seeds, a leading supplier of native wildflower and grass seed, and holder of a royal warrant since 2014, Donald, who has died aged 76, played a key role in restoring biodiversity across the country, from meadows and farmland to parks, gardens and roadside verges. Born in Salisbury, he was the son of Donald MacIntyre, an aircraft engineer and test pilot who worked for the Ministry of Defence, and Mary (nee Turner), whose interest in wildflowers she shared with her children. Donald Sr’s work meant the family had to move frequently at short notice, and Donald Jr attended different schools, including Beaumont school in St Albans and Bath technical school. He gained a BA in botany and plant genetics at Royal Holloway, University of London (1970), and a master’s at Glasgow University, before working in plant breeding at the Scottish Horticultural Research Institute and Floranova Ltd in Norfolk. Having collected seed from wasteland, and with a loan from his father, in 1980 Donald leased farmland in Norfolk to grow wildflower and grass seed. At the time the Nature Conservancy Council (NCC) was conducting research on seed production at Monks Wood Experimental Station, near Huntingdon. Terry Wells, leader of the research, gave Donald a box of stock seed of a range of different wild plants. These formed the foundation for Emorsgate. In 1984, the NCC offered Donald a plot on North Meadow national nature reserve in Wiltshire for seed harvest the following year. There was no established method for harvesting meadow seeds at the time and Donald developed various prototype harvesters, leading to the first meadow brush harvester in 1986, used successfully at North Meadow the same year. Brush harvesting of meadow seeds (the harvester is towed across the site, and seed is brushed into a hopper) was soon adopted by county wildlife trusts and has subsequently been embraced for use in ecological restoration. In 1998 Donald co-founded Flora Locale, an organisation that promoted the use of native seed in wildflower seed mixes. He was also a founding member of the European Native Seed Producers Association (ENSPA), set up in 2018. First and foremost Donald was a farmer. He cared about the land and enjoyed working on it throughout the year, developing machinery and methods to enhance seed sowing, harvesting and storage. He was generous with his knowledge, acting as a mentor to ecologists and land managers. In 2024, his book Restoring the Wild: A Guide to the Restoration, Creation and Management of Meadow and Other Wild Vegetation was published. Donald’s first two marriages, to Annette Pinner, then to Adrienne Hill, ended in divorce. In 2009 he married Jane Lipington, a horticulturist. She worked alongside Donald at Emorsgate and together they bred shire horses at their farm near Bath. Donald is survived by Jane, his four daughters, Mischa, Marsha, Martha and Myrica, from his second marriage, seven grandchildren, and a sister, Anne.