Naturezones Wildlife Education Trust has been awarded
£51,900 Heritage Lottery Grant for its new “Plant Native” project.
The aims of the project will be to work
with school children and local community groups on
individual projects to create native species areas within their community.
Projects will be individually developed with our expert help. Community
groups will be given knowledge about the importance of native species and
the interrelationship between, plants, insects and wildlife. They will be
provided with plants grown by our volunteers and college students mostly
from seeds of a local provenance and seeds that are known to “like”
growing on the Isle of Wight.
Project
manager Angela Hewitt said “A significant part of this project is to
support vulnerable young people and adults who need extra support to get
them back into the community and in many cases to regain confidence to get
back to work.”
This grant enables Naturezones to
take the next step by going out into the community to help them develop
wild flower areas with native species plants. Community groups such as
churches, community associations, parish councils, and schools can all be
involved.
Project manager Angela Hewitt said
“When doing our previous HLF Meadow Makers project we found it virtually
impossible to obtain wild flower plants and
seed's of a local provenance. We
spoke to other organisations such as Green Gym
and the Footprint Trust who also said there was a deficiency. We realised
that there was a need to set up a system where we could provide local
communities with native species plants of a local provenance.”
This part of the project is called
“The Big Plant”. We aim to plant 10,000 wild flower plants in the
community.
Angela said “we feel privileged to
be given a second grant to continue developing the message about the
importance of looking after and developing our wild life habitats, with
wild flower meadows being our specialty and involving a large part of the
community at the same time”.
What are Native Species Plants?
Why are native species plants so important?
Are native species plants in Britain different to native species
plants in other countries?
Do native species plants vary in other part of Britain?
What does local provenance mean?
Why are native species plants of local provenance better than the same
plants but from a distant area.