Local people nurture rare plants to restore Oxfordshire’s historic wetlands

GroWet is an initiative from national wildlife conservation charity Freshwater Habitats Trust. It gives local people the opportunity to play a hands-on role in bringing back threatened species, before they disappear entirely from Oxfordshire’s diverse freshwater habitats.

The charity is inviting community groups and local businesses to act as GroWet ‘community hubs’. Volunteers will collect plants from these community hubs and will care for them in homes, schools and community centres, before returning them at the end of the summer. The plants will then be introduced to Oxfordshire’s historic floodplains and fens to help restore these habitats, which are vital for wildlife.

Around 500 people volunteered for GroWet when it ran for the first time in 2022 and many of the plants grown that year have now been introduced to wetland and freshwater sites across Oxfordshire.

The plants will be grown from seed and cuttings at Oxford Botanic Garden & Arboretum before being distributed to community hubs. They include 27 native species that were once plentiful in the British countryside and across Oxfordshire’s freshwaters and wetlands but are now in decline. Some are so rare they are at risk of disappearing from the whole of England without the sort of help being offered through GroWet. They include:

• Creeping Marshwort: a miniature small creeping plant with delicate white flowers, which is listed as Endangered in the Red Data Book for Great Britain.
• Ragged-Robin: a perennial herb with clusters of pink, star shaped flowers. Land drainage and reduced grazing have resulted in local declines, and it is classed as ‘Near Threatened’ in England.
• Fen Violet, which now only grows at two sites in England, including one in Oxfordshire, and has pretty pale blue/purple or white flowers.