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Craig Dunton, right, with harvested wildflower seed
- Credit: Robbie Phillips
Two new community groups for East Devon and the Blackdown Hills aim to support landowners and gardeners keen to restore or create wildflower meadows.
The local More Meadows groups are based on the successful Moor Meadows Dartmoor community, which since its founding in 2015 has grown to include more than 800 meadow-makers, managing more than 1,000 acres of wildflower meadow to benefit wild plants and wildlife on Dartmoor and beyond.
Thanks to funding from Devon Environment Foundation, the More Meadows concept is an attempt to replicate the original Moor Meadows group’s success by supporting new networks of meadow-makers across Devon.
FUNDING of more than £712,000 has been awarded to a partnership programme with the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust(YDMT) to create wildflower meadows on a large scale. The money is part of the government’s £80 million Green Recovery Challenge Fund which will aim to reverse the alarming decline that has seen 97 per cent of meadows eradicated and the remaining three per cent teetering on the brink of extinction. The YDMT will work with the Forest of Bowland AONB Partnership. Sarah Robinson Forest of Bowland AONB Farming and Wildlife Officer said: “We’re very excited by this news of a grant ward to the Meadow Makers project. The grant will help us to continue the joint project delivery in the Forest of Bowland into a tenth ‘Hay Time’ season; working alongside Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust to restore and enhance upland hay meadows and species rich grassland.”