Wild Plant Nursery

£10,000 awarded

Providing funding to enable Keep it Wild CIC to kick-start a new Wild Plant Nursery to nurture young native plants that are no longer present in most of the farmed landscape – reintroducing and restoring their abundance.

The project will collect, propagate, and sow wild seeds from marginal lands, focusing on plant species such as Umbellifers, Sedges, and Meadow Sweet. These valuable species play crucial roles in providing ecosystem services but have been confined to small, un-farmable areas and roadside verges.

Although the restoration of species-rich meadows and pastures can be accomplished by seeding yellow rattle; similar restoration of wet flushes, dry areas, rock ridges, and shallow dry soils cannot be achieved (in landscapes that have been homogenised) without the reintroduction of biodiverse botanic species.

This project aims to establish a regenerative facility for plants that will:

  • restore botanical diversity,
  • establish a widespread gene base of rare plants,
  • restore lost but not rare species to the southwest,
  • restore species linked or critically important for the wider ecological needs of other wildlife species.

UPDATE Spring 2024: Read more about what has been done so far here!

Images courtesy of Keep it Wild and PlantWild