Case Study: Restoring Culm Grassland with Devon Wildlife Trust at Dunsdon Farm

Long before Wildahome sold a single packet of seed, our founders Paul and Kirstie were doing the work themselves — on their own land, in partnership with a local Wildlife Trust. This is the story of that project: a genuine, ongoing restoration partnership that shaped how we think about meadow creation, and one of the sources of the seed we sell today.

The site: a 54-acre farm next to a nature reserve

In 2005, Paul and Kirstie took on 54 acres of land in North Devon as farming novices, wanting to build a business with a genuinely positive impact on the local environment. As it turned out, their farm sat sandwiched between the two sites that make up the Dunsdon Nature Reserve — and that gave them the opportunity to take part in a major grassland restoration project with Devon Wildlife Trust.

The restoration: 10 acres of Culm grassland

With Devon Wildlife Trust’s support, 10 acres of the farm were converted to Culm grassland — a rare, nationally scarce habitat made up of purple moor grass and rush pasture, found almost nowhere outside Devon, Cornwall and a handful of other western counties. The work involved planting hedgerows and broadcasting wildflower seed, then introducing light conservation grazing with Highland cattle to keep the developing habitat open without overgrazing it.

Culm grassland is slow to build and easy to lose, which is exactly why it needs a genuine long-term partnership rather than a one-off sowing. It’s a habitat that supports species most gardens and farms never see: dormice, marsh fritillary butterflies, and the small mammals and insects that in turn brought barn owls to the farm within a few years — a nesting pair that Paul and Kirstie watched raise two chicks via a camera in their nest box.

What the meadows became

As the Culm grassland established, the change was visible fast: wildflowers spreading colour through the fields, and on a good day, the sound of thousands of insects at work. The uncut meadow grass gave small mammals cover, which in turn supported the predators further up the food chain — the barn owls being the clearest sign that the habitat was functioning as a whole, not just flowering.

An ongoing partnership, not a one-off project

The project didn’t end when the Culm grassland established. Wildahome continues to work with Devon Wildlife Trust today, jointly managing 32 acres of woodland and wildflower meadow at Dunsdon Farm — land that also provides an annual wildflower seed harvest. Some of the British native seed Wildahome sells is collected from these very meadows, alongside seed from our meadows in Powys and carefully chosen British partner farms. When we talk about provenance on our county seed pages, Dunsdon Farm is part of what that means in practice.

What this means for landowners and project teams

We don’t tell this story to claim credit that belongs to Devon Wildlife Trust — the restoration succeeded because of their expertise and their reserve, and we were fortunate neighbours who got to take part. What we took from it, and now apply to every project we advise on, is this:

Match the habitat to the ground, not the other way round. Culm grassland works at Dunsdon because the ground was already suited to it — wet, acidic, low-nutrient. The same principle applies to a domestic meadow or a BNG habitat parcel: choose the mix and management for the site you have, not the one you’d prefer.

Grazing or cutting is not optional. The Highland cattle at Dunsdon did the job a late-summer cut does on a smaller meadow: keeping fertility down and stopping coarse vegetation from taking over. Whichever you use, some form of managed disturbance every year is what keeps a species-rich habitat species-rich.

Real restoration takes years, not one season. The barn owls didn’t arrive the year the wildflowers were sown — they came once the whole food chain had time to establish. Anyone starting a meadow or a habitat creation project should expect the same: a modest first year, and a much better third or fourth.

Local partnerships matter. Whether it’s a Wildlife Trust, a local naturalist group, or simply a neighbour who knows the land, working with people who understand the site’s history and ecology produces better outcomes than working from a generic template. If you’re planning a restoration or BNG project, look for that local expertise early.

If you’re planning a meadow creation or habitat restoration project of your own — whether that’s a garden, a farm, or a BNG parcel — our establishment guide and Biodiversity Net Gain page cover the practical steps, and our Devon seed page has more on the seed we source from the South West. You can also read more about how Wildahome started on our Our Story page.

Have a restoration or habitat creation project you’d like advice on? Email paul@wildahome.co.uk or call 0333 242 0602 — we’re always glad to talk through what might work on your ground.