Moor Meadows Background

 

I asked David how Moor Meadows began and what their original mission was. Here’s what he said:

 

"We bought a property with five acres of heavily grazed paddocks and wanted to convert them into wildflower meadows, but we didn’t know how to do it. So, we contacted Dartmoor National Park as we’re within the park area and asked for advice. They sent someone round to talk to us who said, “Oh, do you know a couple called Kevin and Donna Cox, because they live about a mile away from you and are also trying to create wildflower meadows and are about a year ahead of you.” We said, “No, we don’t know them,” so they said, “Well, we’ll introduce you.” We met up with Donna and Kevin and started sharing ideas about how to convert a piece of grass into something substantial for wildlife. We then wondered how many other people in our town might want to create a meadow, whether it's in a small bit of their garden or on 20 acres of land that they are happy to give up but don’t know how to go about doing it. The idea of Moor Meadows came from that. So we thought, “Well, let's create this community group and see if we can help other people to create meadows.” Our initial mission was to create a way in which people could communicate and ask questions about creating wildflower meadows on Dartmoor."

 

It was clear from our conversation that David and the other co-founders weren’t sure whether such a group would get much interest from the local community. Fortunately, they were pleasantly surprised.

 

"We started by hiring the village hall just to talk to people about meadows. We didn’t know how it was going to go. We thought if we could get a few people to turn up, then it would be interesting. We put out leaflets in various local shops and notice boards and those kinds of things. In the end, around 120 people turned up to that first night to talk about creating a wildflower meadow. We asked the question for the audience, “How many people here have a meadow?” and about 30 people stuck their hand up. We thought, “Well, this is amazing; there are lots of people who are already creating wildflower meadows and lots of people who want to start.” So that was how we started, and as you gather from the name, the concept was to help and encourage people to create meadows on Dartmoor."

 

Clearly, there was a space and demand for a community group such as Moor Meadows. But how did the founders go from there to getting more people directly involved with Moor Meadows and benefitting from a membership?  

 

"We then set up an email exchange where people could sign up and pose a question for the group. For example, “How can I do this, how do I do that, I’ve got a problem with dock, how do I minimize that problem,” and then people from within the group would be able to respond to share their knowledge. That developed into the website and a forum and Facebook and all the usual social media pages."

 

"So, how many people are using the Moor Meadows network now?"

 

"We’ve got approximately 500 people in the email exchange, 1000 on Facebook, 1200 using the forum. And it’s just kind of grown. We’ve now expanded out to the rest of Devon, and we’re trying to create sub-groups so that they can take what we’ve done on Dartmoor and replicate that across East and North Devon or further into South Devon or into Somerset, Cornwall, and it's expanding from there."

​

"Could you share one of your favourite moments or projects during your time at Moor Meadows?"

​

"Probably the project we did with Plantlife, whereby we were able to go to a number of our

members and ask, "would you like your meadow restored?". Plantlife then provided the

funding and contracting to go in and restore the meadows. As part of that project, our

meadow was actually used by Devon Wildlife Trust, who were also involved as a donor site.

A number of our members are used by Devon Wildlife Trust as donor sites, so they come

along and collect the seed to put into other meadows that are being restored."

 

"Seeing people's faces when they come into a meadow, which is full of butterflies and

lovely flies and buzzing bees and butterflies, and being able to wander round and sit there

and look at nature. To see people's faces, that makes it worthwhile."

​

​

​

Community Engagement and Empowerment

​

David explained how establishing a pragmatic and simple way for members to network is vital. The email exchange and forum are key aspects of what makes Moor Meadows so practical and ultimately successful. Some of the benefits include:

 

1. Saving members money by sharing resources.

 

"We do a lot of swapping of things like seeds. One of the primary beneficial plants within a meadow is yellow rattle – they call it the meadow maker because it is parasitic on grass. It's quite an expensive seed so we’ve encouraged members with quite a lot of yellow rattle to be able to allow other members to come along and collect seed to put down in their meadows."

 

"So you’re also saving a lot of your members money and reducing upfront costs, making it just that little bit easier to get a meadow going by being part of a community group."

 

"Correct. It’s not just advice; it’s getting seed or even getting green hay from other people's meadows to set out to get a whole range of different seeds in. It's very much for the community."

​

​

   2. Obtaining high quality seed from nearby members that is from the local environments.

 

"Some people think if you’ve got a wildflower meadow, you should have poppies, which is fine if

you’re in the southeast on chalk, but that’s not what you would have on a meadow on Dartmoor.

Therefore, from our point of view, it's important that if you’re trying to create a meadow, you’re

doing it with seed that is local to the area. This is again the idea of the email exchange, which

is that you can get local seed, not seed from Kent which might have poppy seed in it which is

not a local plant to Dartmoor. It's about trying to make sure that you’re keeping it correct for

the environment you’re in."

 

​

   3. Finding and utilising community members with specific skills and knowledge.  

 

"We found someone who builds websites who bought into our concept of what we’re trying to

achieve. It's his way of donating to a cause of something he believes in. And this goes back to

networking with the right people and getting them to buy into your objectives, and then providing

their time to do that. There are lots of things like that that groups can do if they think a bit outside the box."

 

"There’s a naturalist who lives in the area called John Walters and we used him so that we could create short videos on various topics such as identifying insects. We’ve also done videos from other ecologists on how to identify different grasses. Now there's a whole range of videos that we’ve got on our YouTube channel. We also got John to create some ID sheets on insect, butterflies etc which we then had printed and hand out to members to guide them."

 

 

Another way Moor Meadows has engaged community members and created enthusiasm is through running talks presenting by knowledgeable and renowned speakers.

 

"One of the things we’ve done, which I think has really helped, is we’ve run a lot of talks. Some of which would be via renting a village hall in local areas and parishes, and getting a good speaker to talk about a particular topic, whether it's on how to create a wildflower meadow or whether it’s on insects, wildlife, or anything. But we get really good speakers that people want to listen to. We had Charlie Burrell from the Knepp Estate in Sussex come and do a talk for us. Nearly 200 people turned up to it. He spoke about what they’ve done at Knepp in terms of rewilding and the impact that's had. Getting those kinds of speakers has been really important to demonstrate what Moor Meadows is about and what you can actually do with what originally started as a small community group. We also, during Covid, did a lot of Zoom conferences. On one event we had over 700 people sign up for it."

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Impact on Local Nature

​

Wildflower meadows are an essential and joyous way to fight the drastic decline of insects we are experiencing in the UK. With this in mind, I asked David how he thinks Moor Meadows has impacted local wildlife.

 

"Across our map, you’ll see we now have 2.5 thousand acres across Dartmoor, into Cornwall and other areas in the Southwest. If you take our case, we bought our house in 2008 and had two heavily grazed paddocks had very little wildlife present. We now have thousands of orchids, three different species of orchids, bees and butterflies and birds everywhere, and we get deer every so often getting in. For two years, a deer gave birth to two fawns that lived and grew up in the meadow. Other members have had exactly the same. It’s clearly dramatically increasing. Fairly early on our neighbours all commented on the amount of birdlife and wildlife they are noticing has done up dramatically since we’ve created the meadow. So it clearly is having an impact of reversing the trend of it declining."

 

"And would you also say that Moor Meadows has inspired more families and children to spend more time outdoors?"

 

"Without a doubt. When you look at things like our open meadows, for instance, and you see people come along with their kids, running around and enjoy themselves and so forth. I would have to say without a doubt. How you would measure that I’m not sure, but it is having an impact on people. I know a couple of places have had children from a local school come up to experience and learn about the meadows. I'm sure it has had some positive impact."

​

​

​

Barriers and Tips - Funding, Structure and Mission Clarity

​

David largely spoke about funding when I asked him what barriers there have been to Moor Meadows that might also exist for other community groups. He gave some brilliant insights into what Moor Meadows have done to help their financial situation.

 

"There's a thing called the Peterhead Principle. This basically says that an organisation that uses a lot of volunteers, you can put a cost to the time that volunteers have given and you can offset that cost even though you’ve not paid it against your tax. So that reduces any potential tax. This concept of the Peterhead Principle is something that probably very few community groups will know about. Even if you are going down the route of becoming a CIC (Community Interest Company) you can still apply the Peterhead principle to reduce any corporation tax you have to pay."

 

"Mainly, I think a barrier for many community groups is funding. And one of the questions is well how are you going to raise the funding because a lot of businesses will only support you if you’re a registered charity or something like that, whilst a community group is fairly informal and may not necessarily have the controls that a company prepared to donate money would want in place. That did definitely take a while for us to be able to demonstrate and convince organizations that we were ethical and serious about what we’re doing, and that the money would be used properly for the objective of the community group. So I think in the early days, that's one of the big obstacles."

 

I asked David for any tips for communities that might need to do that demonstrating and convincing. To summarise his points, he suggests looking into the best structure for your community group (e.g., not-for-profit, community incorporated company, or charity) and to slowly build a track record of doing your nature restoration and working with local environmental organisations. Here is his guidance in his own words.

 

"One decision is the structure that the community decides to go with. Does it stay as a Not-for-profit Community Group, or does it become a Community Interest Company, or does it go the charity route? All of those, well, the last two in particular, have a lot more implications in terms of what you have to comply with. Particularly with charities where you have to do a report every year to the charity commission and all sorts of things. Plus, you’re a lot more controlled over what you can and can’t do. But the positive of that is it shows to a potential donor that you are above board, controlled by the commission, etc."

 

"Another way is the way we did it. We were fortunate in that we could self-fund ourselves

for quite a while to allow us to start slowly and just do it, building up a track record

whereby people say, “well, you’ve been going long enough, we can quite clearly see

that the objectives of Moor Meadows are being met. We can see you’re doing all these

wonderful things and having all these great talks and wonderful speakers, so any money

we give to you will be used for that purpose.” But that takes a bit of time to build that

track record. And that comes down to building up the relationships with the right

organisations and the right companies that will support the objectives of what you’re doing.

Hence why we do a lot of things with Devon Wildlife Trust and Dartmoor National Park

because we’re all trying to achieve pretty much the same things but in slightly different ways. But that does take time."

​

Some other top tips from David were regarding finances, clarity of purpose.

 

"I think clarity is important. Being clear about what you’re doing and focusing in on that. Not trying to be everything to everyone. I think you become very diluted in that way. We’re very clear, if you look on our website, you can see very clearly what we’re trying to achieve. We’ve stuck with that and we’re not moving away from it because, as I say, that would dilute our message."

 

​

​

Improving Access to Wildflower Meadow Creation and Ownership

 

David highlighted Moor Meadows' growing commitment to catering to those with smaller gardens. The goal is to make the creation of wildflower meadows and rewilded lawns achievable, irrespective of your garden's size or even if you don't have a garden at all!

 

"A wildflower area doesn’t have to be big. We’ve got one guy who wanted a meadow

but he has a very small garden and a couple of kids. He thought, “well, I can’t give up

any of my small bit of my lawn” because he wanted his kids to be able to play football

and so on. So, he actually knocked down the shed that he had and built a new shed with

a flat roof. He stuck a load of soil on top of it and has got his meadow on top of his roof of

his garden shed. It is small but there's loads of bees flying around and other insects

visiting it."

 

"And do you have more interest in making more effort to target those with small gardens?"

 

"Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we’ve just done a talk in East Devon, and we did another one in Ivybridge three or four weeks ago on how to create a meadow with an acre or less. If you’ve just got a small area of garden, you can still create a little meadow; it doesn’t have to be big. Every little bit helps wildlife. We’ve seen people who live in flats (not necessarily members) just putting loads of window boxes out and it's amazing where these insects come from to the flowers on the window boxes. Every little bit is beneficial."

 

"That’s very much why we ran these talks the other day - To say, “look, you don’t need a lot of ground; you can just take a bit of your lawn, a five-square-meter pitch and create a mini-meadow, and you’ll be amazed at what comes in.” A lot of people think that you have to have acres and acres, but actually, you don’t. You can do it on smaller areas, and we are definitely trying to get that message across to people."

 

This is where community-led nature restoration really shines. Whilst it is critical to have large spaces where insects and wildflowers can thrive, perhaps more important is sharing the joy that wildflower meadow creation can bring to as many people as possible. This widens awareness, encourages empathy for the suffering our natural landscapes are currently going through, and therefore produces more support for future nature recovery policies and initiatives.

​

​

​

Future Plans - Establishing Sub-groups

​

Moor Meadows has got bigger and better as time has gone on. I wondered what future goals David and the rest of the steering group have in mind to continue its development and improve its impact.

 

"At this stage, we’re continuing to slowly grow and expand into other areas by trying to create sub-groups whereby other people will replicate the model we’ve used and use the same things we’ve had work – like the talks, open meadows. And just try to expand it into other areas, whether that's outside Devon and further up or down the country."

 

Creating sub-groups mean that distant local communities can have their own independence, structuring and community events whilst still benefitting from the guidance and resources of Moor Meadows. This is a fantastic way for a community group to grow in a way that decentralises commitment and workload, therefore allowing the benefits to spread far and wide.

 

Creating sub-groups will allow the Open Meadows events to reach further too. Here’s David explaining to me what Open Meadows are.

 

"We do a lot of Open Meadows, where several of us open our meadow to members of the community group so they can come along and have a walk around and talk about how you manage your meadow on an annual basis. These open meadow days are really quite important. I think we had 18 or 20 meadows open this year. However, someone from somewhere like Dorset isn’t going to want to come to Dartmoor. So, the idea is that if we create smaller sub-groups with a smaller committee, they can have their own open meadows, run their own local talks so that people don’t have to drive miles just to try and get that information."

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 Restore Togethers' Final Thoughts 

​

Community initiative, environmental stewardship, and the power of collective action. This is what Moor Meadows demonstrates so well. What began as a personal quest to transform paddocks into wildflower meadows turned into a thriving community group with a mission to spread knowledge and encourage others to create their own havens for wildlife. 

​

A key aspect of Moor Meadows' success lies in its emphasis on community engagement and empowerment. By creating a platform for shared learning, resource exchange, and collective action, the group has not only enriched local ecosystems but has also created a template for other communities to follow.

​

Importantly, Moor Meadows has shown that nature restoration is not limited by the size of one's garden. Through talks, events, and educational initiatives, the group is inspiring individuals with small gardens to contribute to the cause, emphasising that every effort, no matter how modest, benefits wildlife.

​

As Moor Meadows looks to the future, the emphasis is on expansion through sub-groups. This decentralised approach allows distant communities to adopt and adapt the successful model, spreading the benefits of community-led nature restoration far and wide. Their continuing growth reflects a widespread enthusiasm for nature restoration and a genuine desire to connect with like-minded individuals.

​

Moor Meadows exemplifies the transformative potential of a community united by a common goal.

​