Bulworthy Project

02/09/2026

Volunteer Days October, November 2026
Volunteer days are a great way to connect with the fantastic habitats all around us and an opportunity to play a real part in making Devon’s wildlife more resilient.

24th of October
We’ll be planting 1,000 Devil’s bit scabious plants on Outer Knowstone Moor to expand and improve the habitat for an existing colony of marsh fritillary butterflies. Devil’s bit scabious is the food-plant for marsh fritillary butterflies and is therefore vital
to their survival. Last year we planted Devil’s bit scabious on Higher Comfort Nature Reserve which is adjacent to Outer Knowstone Moor. Our intention is to create a corridor of habitat which allows marsh fritillaries to colonise Higher Comfort Nature
Reserve.

28th of November
We’ll be carrying out forestry work at Higher Comfort Nature Reserve. We want to transform the wooded areas into a more open structured woodland and improve them for biodiversity. We’ll be pruning and thinning out the trees and stacking deadwood to
create habitat piles.
email us at [email protected] for more details.

17/08/2026

It would be great to see more Devil's bit scabious popping up in gardens, fields and verges.

We had a fantastic response to our Marsh Fritillary Project last year, with over 10,000 Devil’s bit scabious plants planted by 46 landowners on 51 sites. This is a great step forward in enhancing habitat for the marsh fritillary butterfly in our priority area.
We’d like your help to build on this success and increase the habitat further. To do this, you can collect seeds from Devil’s bit scabious and plant them wherever you think they’d do well.

This is how to do it:

Collecting the Seeds
The seeds should be ready to collect in September or October.
Wait until the petals have fallen off and the seeds are showing
Rub them gently with your finger. If they easily come away from the seed head, they’re ready to harvest.
Take the seed heads and put them in a paper bag.
Rub the seeds away from the seed heads in the bag.

Planting the Seeds
The seeds should be planted as soon as possible after harvesting.
Find a patch of bare earth, or scrape the vegetation back to make a bare patch.
If cattle have been grazing on the land where you’re planting, their hoof prints are ideal.
Sprinkle the seeds on to the bare earth.
Sprinkle a very small amount of earth on top, or press them gently into the soil and water them if the weather is dry.

Where to Plant
Devil’s bit scabious will tolerate a wide range of soil conditions.
Marsh fritillaries like wet tussocky grassland. Increasing their populations requires more Devil’s bit scabious growing in wet areas with tussocky grassland.
Try to find places where the seeds won’t be completely submerged in water.
Avoid areas with really dense grass growth.

Aftercare
Devil’s bit scabious are fairly hardy plants, but some aftercare can increase their chances of survival.
Grass can shade out the young plants, so carefully cutting the grass back can help, but be careful not to damage the Devil’s bit scabious.
In very dry weather, it would be good to water the plants if this is practical.

29/07/2026

The lawn's looking good!

14/07/2026

We're carrying out a series of surveys of the woodland at Field Irish Farm through the year. Our summer survey mainly concentrated on identifying and mapping springs, streams and wet ground which had survived 3 heatwaves. By mapping this, we can work out where best to put interventions to retain the water, thereby making the woodland more resilient to future droughts.

06/07/2026

We have mice eating our peas in the polytunnel. Apparently it's rare for grass snakes to eat mice, but we can hope.

22/06/2026

It's an exciting time to be working in natural flood management. People are seeing the effect climate change is having and looking for solutions. Natural flood management is widely recognised as a way to mitigate some of the flooding issues.
At the same time, beavers are recolonising our waterways and carrying out natural flood managment alongside us. Part of our job is to facilitate them in doing so.

12/06/2026

Not the greatest photo, but lovely to see tawny owls growing up in our little woodland. There are four young tawnys in all. They didn't stick around for long to have their photos taken, but we keep getting glimpses of them as we walk around the land.

08/06/2026

This is a view from the woodland we've been writing a woodland management plan for. We do get to visit some lovely places.

02/06/2026

It's been great to have cattle back on the land. They are just as good as ecosystem engineers as beavers are. They are an environmental disaster if you farm them in the wrong way, but that would also be true of beavers.
Our own cattle did a lot of the hard work of getting our meadow up to county wildlife site standard. It now needs some grazing to keep it up to that standard.
They also keep the woodland rides clear without using fossil fuels.

18/05/2026

We took a day off work to go and look at trees. It's the first time either of us have been to Kew and it was well worth a visit. We'll definitely go back.