Could a Nature Recovery Award help your project flourish?

The Nature Recovery Award offers up to £5,000 grant funding to support practical schemes to create and enhance wildlife habitats.

This initiative feeds into Wilder Horsham District: our project growing a healthy network of natural spaces for the benefit of all our residents. Individual landowners, community groups and local charities are eligible to apply, but where to start?

Here are just some of the initiatives that the Award has helped make a reality…

Just add water

This is one of the most important habitat improvements that can be made to any site. Ponds and shallow, seasonally wet areas known as scrapes should be planned with the natural flow of water and underlying geology in mind. We recommend letting aquatic plants naturally regenerate for at least the first year: it’s cheaper and more natural. And strictly no ornamental fish!

Get that meadow glow

Wildflowers blooming at different times throughout the year provide vital food for bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects.

We’ve funded the purchase of seed to restore these beautiful meadows, as well as solutions like livestock grazing and scything to keep them in balance for years to come.

Put down roots

Hedgerows create nature corridors and benefit overall farm health, while orchards are an edible paradise for the whole food chain – including humans! We support projects to restore these often-neglected heritage features.

Cruel to be kind

Sometimes, we help people to remove trees from land to restore a special habitat. A conifer plantation planted over an ancient woodland site or birch and pine saplings smothering rare heathland are two examples.

A home of their own

We consider funding artificial habitats where evidence shows them to benefit struggling species. Nest boxes mounted on houses or barns have helped local Barn Owls, House Martins, Swallows and Swifts, whose habits are not suited to modern building techniques.

Tooling up

Community groups and charities often have the will, but may lack the confidence or equipment needed to undertake conservation tasks.
We can fund the purchase of both basic and more specialist hand tools (such as bowsaws, loppers and tree poppers) and provide guidance on how to use them effectively.