Welcome to the Avon Valley Meadows Forum

[Lynne Kenderdine]

Dear All, Welcome to the Avon Valley Meadows Forum.

This is the space where anyone who has an existing wildflower meadow, or would like to restore, enhance or create a meadow, or simply has an interest in meadow conservation & management, can connect with fellow meadow-makers & landowners in the Avon Valley. We invite you to share your expertise, experiences and problems. Use the Forum to seek & offer help, promote services, exchange views, to learn from and communicate with each other.

My name is Lynne Kenderdine. I'm Land Management Advisory Officer with Devon Wildlife Trust (DWT) and Project Officer for the Avon Valley Project. We cover the River Avon catchment from its source near Ryders Hill on Dartmoor, to the sea at Bantham. Our focus is habitat connectivity, helping nature recover by encouraging landowners & managers like yourselves to take action for wildlife...where it matters most...on the ground.

So far the project has connected with over 180 landholdings covering almost 4,000 ha. Amongst them are over 40 individual landowners actively creating over 100 acres of new wildflower meadow habitat. The majority transforming grasslands with limited interest into flower rich, insect abundant places where wildlife is thriving.

We'd like to welcome you to our ever growing landowner network , hear about your land & help you to enhance, transform or create your meadow. We offer free of charge management advice, site visits and condition assessments. Where possible we provide practical help, in the form of seed donations, green hay, 'elbow grease' from our local volunteer groups and in the early phases of meadow establishment, ongoing management advice & monitoring. We run regular events and hold an annual Meadow Makers BBQ, bringing like minded landowners together. We signpost to grant schemes, sources of funding & other advice providers.

We've seen how successful the On-line Moor Meadows Forum has been in bringing the meadow making community together & enabling people to help each other. DWT are delighted to be able to launch this Avon Valley hub to help our meadow making community do the same.

I'm placing this post as a way of "getting things started". Perhaps you can post a photo of your meadow, tell us its history, about a wildlife sighting or pose a question about meadow management. Perhaps as we all anticipate the coming spring, you are thinking about creating a meadow of your own and would like some tips about where to start. I'm looking forward to being part of this exciting initiative and, as ever, learning together.

If you'd like to find out more about Devon Wildlife Trust's Avon Valley Project then please watch our short film on www.devonwildlifetrust.org/what-we-do/o ... von-valley or contact me - Lynne Kenderdine - lkenderdine@devonwildlifetrust.org or 07392 865905....

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[John7]

Hi Lynne,
I love this group because of the potential for the habitat connectivity you refer to, or landscape scale conservation as I sometimes hear it called. If you're going to join the dots, where better than along a river, down an artery of the land. Historically it must have been an amazing corridor for all manner of life and it feels so right to restore the flow of nature from salty sea to high moor.
Also I like barbecues.

[Peter Brown]

Lynne,
Many thanks for all the info.
I will need to keep in close touch with you over our own Yealm Estuary to Moor project.
Peter