The late May Bank Holiday this weekend sees the start of a £10.5m campaign to bring people and communities together to sow, grow and support UK native wild flowers.

Grow Wild – a new campaign funded by the Big Lottery Fund– aims to inspire people to get together to transform unloved urban sites, gardens and windowsills into wildlife-friendly wild flower patches.

The first stage in the campaign is a call for people to nominate unloved or neglected sites, particularly in urban areas, throughout the UK for a Grow Wild makeover.

The four winning sites will each receive a £100,000 to create an inspiring space using UK native plants for everyone to enjoy for years to come. Nominations can be made via the Grow Wild website at growwilduk.com

The campaign will also be featured in a special investigation report on BBC1’s Countryfile on May 26 which will explore why over 97% of the UK’s wild flower meadows have been lost since the 1930s, and how people can come together to create new havens for wildlife.

The four special Grow Wild sites – one each in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - will be selected from a shortlist of 16 (four in each country).

The winners will be announced in the autumn of 2013.

Grow Wild is led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and is supported by the Big Lottery Fund as part of its mission to bring real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need, through environment, health, education and charitable good causes across the UK.

The special Grow Wild sites are one part of the overall campaign that aims to inspire three million people to take direct action for UK native plants.

Over the next three years, one million seed-sowing kits will be distributed through Grow Wild partners, with the particular aim of reaching young people, aged 12 -25, and new audiences who wouldn’t usually engage with environmental or community projects.

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