Come and be part of a global voice for wild plants and fungi
This year on National Meadows Day, we are campaigning for the protection of irreplaceable meadows – and we need your help!
Our wildflower meadows are a powerful ally in the fight against climate change – but they are in trouble!
“Will you help protect and restore irreplaceable habitats?”
Our corporate partners benefit from 35 years of experience in nature restoration so they can achieve real impact.
Become a Plantlife member today and together we will rebuild a world rich in plants and fungi
Come and see us at the annual Groundswell Festival in Hertfordshire.
Groundswell is an annual festival, now in it’s 9th year. It’s a two-day event open to everyone who is curious about how we grow food and care for the land, with a focus on a farmer’s main asset – the soil.
Throughout the festival there will be a number of talks, demonstrations and discussions from a variety of people across the sector including farmers, soil health experts and agricultural policy experts.
This year we will be working with Oakbank and Velcourt at the festival – come and see us at stand E27 in the Pasture Field.
John Harold is Plantlife’s Farm Partnership Manager. You can contact John here.
Emma Ball is Plantlife’s Specialist Ecological Advisor working within our Plantlife Biodiversity Consultants team. You can contact Emma here.
Beth Webb is Plantlife’s Partnership Manager. You can contact Beth here.
Laura Colman is Plantlife’s Senior Partnerships Manager. You can contact Laura here.
Sarah Williams is Plantlife’s Head of Partnerships. You can contact Sarah here.
Join us in person, or virtually at this special collaboration event between Bristol Libraries, the British Library’s Living Knowledge Network and Plantlife.
Step into the mysterious world of wild plants and uncover the secrets that grow in our fields and gardens. Join gardener Danny Clarke, Plantlife Specialist Botanical Advisor Sarah Shuttleworth and pastoral literature scholar Francesca Gardner for a lively evening exploring the power and poetry of plants.
From the crucial role of wildflowers in tackling the climate crisis to the surprising history of “lawnmower poetry,” our expert panel will dig into how plants shape our gardens, communities and imaginations. Learn how to make space for nature in your own outdoor spaces and discover how the humble daisy or dandelion could be saving the world.
The event will be live streamed on the day on the Living Knowledge website and the recording will be available after. Visit the website here for more information.
Sarah Shuttleworth has been a botanist for 17 years, and surveys plants and habitats all over the UK. Sarah also teaches botanical identification to beginners and professionals, online and in person, using creative ways to engage and inspire.
She is also one of the spokespeople for Plantlife’s NoMowMay campaign and is often seen on BBC news, radio and other media outlets to promote the importance of plants and their habitats.
Danny Clarke is a British Garden Designer who shot to fame in 2015 as BBC’s Instant Gardener. He has also graced our screens with a host of popular garden makeover shows and horticultural advice.
Danny is now a member of Alan Titchmarsh’s Love Your Garden team and is passionate about making a difference to climate change and community integration.
Francesca Gardner is a researcher, supervisor, and Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholar at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. She works on long eighteenth-century pastoral and georgic poetry, genres which explore people’s relationship to the natural world.
Her recent article ‘Lawnmower Poetry and the Poetry of Lawnmowers’, published in Critical Quarterly in May 2025, received national and international media attention.
Our meadows are incredible and irreplaceable habitats – and they’re in trouble!
Join us this National Meadows Day to make sure our meadows don’t become a memory.
Plantlife’s National Meadows Day is an annual celebration on the first Saturday of July, to celebrate these incredible habitats and our connection to them, which goes back to our ancestors.
For centuries people have been caring for our meadows – but they are now more at risk than ever.
This #NationalMeadowsDay, we are calling on the government to protect irreplaceable meadows, and we need your help.
How would you feel if someone knocked down an historical building like the Houses of Parliament, just to build it somewhere else? Or reduced Edinburgh Castle to rubble and created a lacklustre replica. It wouldn’t be the same, right?
The same applies to meadows. Without proper protections, the destruction of meadows is continuing.
That’s why we’re calling for irreplaceable meadows to be added to the Irreplaceable Habitats list.
This National Meadows Day, we need your help to make sure our meadows don’t become just a memory.
Take a moment to unwind this National Meadow’s Day.
Join our Three Hagges Woodmeadow Nature Reserve Manager, Kara Garnett, to learn what makes a woodmeadow, how Three Hagges was created and how we manage it for nature.
Through the Countryside Management Association, we are excited to be hosting this Creating and Managing Woodmeadows event at our Three Hagges Woodmeadow Nature Reserve.
We want to invite you to join our Nature Reserve Manager Kara Garnett on site, to learn what makes a woodmeadow, how Three Hagges was created and how we manage it for nature.
We’ll be exploring a number of exciting topics including; what a woodmeadow is, how it differs from other habitats, how Three Hagges was created, how we are managing the reserve with the support of the community.
During the day we will also visit the site’s polytunnel where volunteers grow plants from seed. There will even be the opportunity to visit a new woodmeadow which is currently in development.
This event is free for Countryside Management Association members, and £44.04 for non-members. Find out more and book your space by visiting the Countryside Management Association website.
Get ready for a full day of celebrations! Discover the secrets of the temperate rainforest through talks, music and even guided walks to experience the wonder of these habitats first hand.
We’re teaming up with Cumbria Woodlands to host a full day of activities for you to explore, learn and wonder at the beauty of our temperate rainforests. Discover the species that survive nowhere else on earth and meet the experts working to recover these forgotten habitats. There will even be the opportunity to take a trip into a real rainforest to experience the wonder of these habitats first hand! You can book onto a walk separately using the links in our What’s On page here.
Our rainforest activities will take place on World Rainforest Day on June 22. The day will begin with a drop-in session where you can explore Cumbria’s temperate rainforest and meet the organisations who are on the forefront of the work being done to protect these special habitats. Tea and coffee will be available.
We will then be showing an exclusive screening of Cumbrian music producer DJ Werkha’s SATURAMA. This beautiful, immersive film shot at Naddle Forest by Joel Hepworth and Ryan Cooper, is designed to show you the magic of temperate rainforests, and is brought to life with a live soundscape installation by Tom Leah. Werka’s SATURAMA inspires us to form a deeper connection with our natural world and protect it as we would each other.
Following SATURAMA, we will be hosting a panel discussion bringing together experts from across the country who represent a variety of different professional sectors. Together we will be exploring how collaboration between sectors can make us so much more than the sum of our parts when it comes to making a positive change for nature.
9am – 10am: Arrival at Rheged Discovery Centre. Attendees must register their parking with the venue to avoid paying a parking fee. Tea and coffee will be available in the Blencathra room, while you take some time to learn about Cumbria’s temperate rainforest from our partners.
10am – 11am: SATURAMA – live installation by DJ Werkha in Screen 2
11am – 11.15am: An opportunity to stretch your legs and grab a hot drink before returning to Screen 2 for the panel discussion
11.15am – 11.45am: ‘How can we work together to save our rainforests?’ – Your chance to ask questions to our experts to discover how everyone can be involved to protect and restore our temperate rainforests
12.00pm – 12.30pm: Lunch will be served in the Blencathra Room. Please indicate when booking your ticket if you have any dietary requirements or allergies
12.30pm – 1pm: Get ready to leave for your guided walk! Walk leaders will be waiting outside in the car park with minibuses ready to transport you to your guided walk location! Please ensure you have booked your space on the guided walk of your choice
1pm – 1.30pm: Travel to guided walks – find out more about the individual walks on our What’s On page here.
1.30pm – 3.30pm: Guided walks. This is your opportunity to experience the magic of temperate rainforests up close! Please inform your walk leader if you have any accessibility requirements or pre-existing medical conditions that they need to be aware of.
3.30pm – 4pm: Travel back to Rheged Discovery Centre
Join us and expert botanist Ben Averis for this meadows ID training session to get ready for a season of surveys.
We have an exciting opportunity for people to join us, along with expert botanist Ben Averis, for a meadows ID training session in the Cairngorms.
This training session aims to give you skills to identify a number of wild plants that we find in our grasslands in Scotland.
After the session, there will also be further volunteering opportunities to join surveys at 4 farms later this summer.
In partnership with Pastures for Life, we have been supporting 4 farmers to trial novel grazing techniques. These techniques have been designed to improve biodiversity in upper Strathspey in the Cairngorms National Park for the past 4 years.
This summer volunteers will then be leading on a rapid habitat assessment, revisiting quadrats previously assigned to assess habitat improvement.
Location: The upcoming training session will take place on June 7 at Nethy Bridge in the Cairngorms.
Accessibility: This training covers rough terrain and will be off paths. There will also be some steep slopes.
Facilities: There are no toilet facilities on site.
Refreshments: Tea and coffee will be provided, and volunteers are asked to bring a packed lunch on the day.
Join our Ranscombe Farm Reserve Manager Ben Sweeney, on a guided walk of this Important Plant Area. Head out across our flagship reserve to spot some of the rare orchids and other wildflowers that make it so special.
We’re inviting you on a guided walk of Ranscombe Farm Nature Reserve, to discover the species that make it such an important and special site!
Learn about the wonderful wildflowers that grow at our flagship nature reserve and how we manage the land to help them thrive.
Accessibility: This walk will be around 3km (2 miles) and is suitable for people with a reasonable level of fitness. We will be traversing uneven ground and there are two fairly steep hills. There are no stiles on this walk and there will be frequent stops.
Details: The walk will take place from 1.30pm until 4.30pm on Thursday 29 May. Ranscombe Farm is our largest nature reserve in England, occupying a total area of 560 acres on the slopes of the North Downs in Kent. We will begin the walk further into the reserve with everyone meeting at the entrance and then vehicle sharing to reach our start point.
There are limited spaces on this guided walk, so make sure to book your place early.
Click the link to email Ben and receive your joining instructions.
Join our experts on a mock Field Identification Skills Certificate assessment to help prepare for the real thing.
The Field Identification Skills Certificate assessment can be daunting, so a mock is a great way of preparing yourself for the real thing.
This mock assessment will mirror closely the FISC assessment. Although you will not get an official FISC score from this mock, you will get a mock score and have the full FISC experience so that when you are ready for your assessment, you will know what to expect. If you have any questions before you secure your place, or want to discuss any adjustments that would support you to take part, contact rachel.jones@plantlife.org.uk.
The assessor for this FISC is Sarah Shuttleworth, Specialist Botanical Advisor at Plantlife.
Plantlife is pleased to partner with the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) as an Approved Provider for the FISC. This event is being run by Plantlife Biodiversity Consultants.
The Field Identification Skills Certificate (FISC) assessment can be daunting, so a mock is a great way of preparing yourself for the real thing.
This mock assessment will mirror closely the FISC assessment. Although you will not get an official FISC score from this mock, you will get a mock score and have the full FISC experience so that when you are ready for your assessment, you will know what to expect.
If you have any questions before you secure your place, or want to discuss any adjustments that would support you to take part, contact rachel.jones@plantlife.org.uk.
The assessor for this FISC is Sam Braine, Ecology Manager at Plantlife Biodiversity Consultants.
This is an in-person training event for over 18s only, the course will involve walking on steep and uneven ground.
This is an person training course for over 18s only, the course will involve walking on steep and uneven ground.
Over the course of one day, our aim is to give you the tools and confidence to be able to identify a range of bryophyte species commonly found in temperate rainforest habitat. The course will include both theory and practical elements to fully support your learning.
What is a bryophyte? The basics of bryophytes: mosses vs liverworts, growth forms, reproductive processes. Key identification features of mosses and liverworts. How to use a key to identify species in the field. The relationship between bryophytes and temperate rainforest.
The Rainforest Restoration Project is being led by the Woodland Trust in partnership with Plantlife. This project is funded by the Government’s Species Survival Fund. The fund was developed by Defra and its Arm’s-Length Bodies. It is being delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England and the Environment Agency.
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