In article , Sacha writes:

Keith Dancey1/3/04 4:45

Plantlife - the wild plant conservation charity - has a chance to purchase
Ranscombe Farm, near Rochester in Kent.

snip

See www.plantlife.org.uk for details about the charity.



Have you approached the Lottery fund people? And I wonder if the Prince's
Trust would get involved in something like this.


Personally, no. I'm just a member. HMG have offered £665,000 for the project,
and Medway Council is "thinking about" donating £265,000. So, you see, the
gearing level for donations attracting extra funding is very high. That is
a measure of the national importance of this site.

The unfortunate aspect is that HMG's funding is tied to the land being acquired
and the money spent by the end of this Financial Year:-} These sorts of funds
are then tied to the charity concerned raising a proportion of the sum itself.


Plantlife's Biodiversity Programme Manager says the site has more "Back From
the Brink" species than any other single site in Britain. This includes
meadow clary, hairy mallow, broad-leaved cudweed and ground pine.

It is thought to be the only site in Britain where the corncockle still grows
wild.

It has blue pimpernel, lady and man orchids, and hosts of other charismatic wild
plants giving a richness of biodiversity unequalled elsewhere.

By taking ownership, Plantlife will be able to conserve this seedbank, and
through sympathetic management, encourage the full potential of the site.


But Plantlife is small. I've coughed up my three figure sum, but I thought I'd
give this particular appeal a bit more publicity. It was gardening which got
me into wild plants, anyway. We don't really know what we are missing with so
much blanket herbicide having been applied to the countryside over the last
fifty years:-(




Cheers,

keith









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