The heath of the moment - Restoration of a precious landscape

An ongoing project which aims to restore St Georges Down and Bleak Down to their original lowland heath habitat has just received £1,700 of grant aid from Rural Action.

This ambitious phase of work involved taking cuttings of three types of heather: bell heather, ling heather and crossleaved heather from remnant patches on the heathland sites last August. Cuttings of bog myrtle from Munsley Down and bilberry from St Boniface Down were also taken and these, together with seed from purple moor grass and bristle bent, are all now being grown on in a mist propagator at the Isle of Wight College and will soon be ready for potting.

The heathland variety will make up a suite of heathland plants which will be planted out on an acre of cleared land on St Georges Down next year.

The work is being led by St Georges Down Conservation Group with the support of John Fyfe Ltd and the Isle of Wight College, thus a new and productive partnership has been formed.

The importance of this work in terms of Island landscape and ecology cannot be stressed enough. The Island is unusual in having a diverse range of habitats in a relatively small area and the heathland enriches that diversity. However, 82% of Island heathland has been lost since 1850 and when you bear in mind that the UK holds 20% of the European resource, it is vital that this trend is reversed. It is those simple statistics that is spurring on the work of the Conservation Group.

Sean Ridler, co-ordinator of the Group said:

"We are delighted the cuttings have taken as it means we are restoring the Down with local provenance plants. The high success rate is making us think of turning our hand to the propagation of other locally growing species. This will help to retain the integrity of the Island's natural flora."

Project Co-ordinator Sean Ridler

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