A biodiversity project to support native Denbighshire wildflowers has exceeded last season’s results.

The Council’s local provenance tree nursery at Green Gates Farm, St Asaph, produced nearly 8,000 plants during its first growing season last year.

This project has been funded by the Welsh Government, through the Local Nature Partnerships Cymru ENRaW project and Local Places for Nature grant.

In 2023 the number of plants grown has passed last season by reaching 13,000 wildflowers.

These include ox eye daisy, knapweed, field scabious, selfheal, yarrow, wild carrot, red campion, bladder campion, buttercup, birds foot trefoil and ladies bedstraw.

Many of these wildflowers support a variety of different wildlife. For example, bird’s foot trefoil can provide food for 160 species of insects, encouraging shrews and lapwings to visit the plant, improving nature’s resilience in local communities.

The plants produced at the nursery will be taken to existing wildflower meadows in the county. These will help boost the range of species on the sites, add variety and colour to improve the look of each site for the local communities to enjoy and maintain and improve biodiversity.

Having more wildflowers on the meadows also gives greater support to pollinators who are important to the human food supply chain.

Wildflowers in county meadows provide bees and other pollinators with food across the year. On a summer’s day, an acre of meadow roughly holding three million flowers can produce nearly 1kg of nectar sugar supporting up to 100,000 bees.

Without this habitat support for insects, nature’s pollinators would be less, impacting on our food chain and most of fruit and vegetables produced may have to be artificially pollinated at cost and time.

The nursery has also increased its number of trees grown from 1,000 last season to 11,500 for 2023 which include pedunculate oak, sessile oak, sweet chestnut, silver birch, alder, wych elm and goat willow.

Councillor Barry Mellor, Lead Member for Environment and Transport, said: “A lot of hard work has gone into producing a larger number of plants and trees for 2023, from the initial collection of seeds last year to the care and attention to help these species grow.

“The volunteers we have had at the nursery have really helped us push forward with the project and I want to thank them and the biodiversity team for providing such a fantastic number of plants and trees that will continue our work to support and improve nature across the county.

“The meadows that these plants will call their new homes are for everyone, they support the creation of connected corridors for nature to thrive across our urban areas. The project has great support from our schools who are eager to follow and learn about how it not just helps nature but also our communities as well. The wildflower plants grown will help to add diversity and colour across our sites for the community to enjoy, along with the pollinators at risk who help put food on our tables.

“Given the time they need to establish, our meadows will be for the equal wellbeing of residents and wildlife to both enjoy now, and most importantly, for our future generations in the shape of our school pupils here in Denbighshire.”