WATER plants the seeds of meadow making with landowners

Living in a beautiful rural landscape like the Erme catchment, you could be forgiven for thinking we are well provided for when it comes to meadows. But sadly much of that grassland landscape is a monoculture with scant biodiversity and a pretty depleted habitat for pollinators, insects, small mammals and birds that once thrived in a more diverse and species-rich environment.

WATER launched the Erme Meadow makers initiative to encourage landowners in the catchment to create wild flower meadows on their land.

Traditional flower meadows have declined in the UK by around 97% since the 1930s leaving only around 7,500 hectares.

This spiralling decline results in fewer meadows, meaning fewer pollinators and less specialist grassland species (like Harvest mice, and voles). Poor breeding habitats along with fragmented movement corridors hasten the species decline.

Each new meadow creates a welcoming habitat. By focusing on the Erme catchment, over time, we will begin to build a necklace of wildlife-friendly spaces that, when connected, develop a wildlife corridor along which species can more easily travel, forage, breed and thrive.

WATER joins forces with Devon Wildlife Trust

To kick start the Erme Meadow Makers initiative WATER teamed up with Lynne Kenderdine from Devon Wildlife Trust to run pre-booked drop-in sessions for local landowners at Shilston Barton Café by kind permission of the owner. Lynne has a wealth of knowledge and experience which she was happy to share with each landowner in a one-to-one session and thus give bespoke advice on their site and circumstances. All sessions were fully booked with 11 landowners signing up for a follow-up visit.

We look forward to seeing the results of our meadow Erme Makers initiative next spring when the autumn planting should begin to show results, although this is not an instant process, so it’s necessary to give nature time to play its part and perhaps also give the inherent seed bank in the soil a chance to show what it has been storing all these years.