Plantlife International was founded in 1989 by Dr Jane Smart and Prof. David Bellamy. Now, fifteen years later, they are respectively the charity’s Chief Executive and President. Back in the late eighties, there was no organisation devoted exclusively to protecting the UK’s wild plants and flowers – a worrying thought as without plants no other animal life can exist. Though only 31, Jane foresaw an organisation that would be ‘an RSPB for plants’, and started work from a tiny room in the Natural History Museum. Today Plantlife International is the UK’s leading charity for the conservation of wild plants and has 12,500 members, 22 nature reserves, and a permanent staff of 28 with offices in England, Scotland, Wales and Slovakia.

Plantlife International’s principal function is to carry out practical conservation work on some of the UK’s rarest plants. Their internationally respected species conservation programme, Back from the Brink, was created just one year into the charity’s life and now has a list of over 100 wild plants. These include well-known arable plants such as cornflower, corn cleavers and broad-leaved cudweed, which have been taken to the brink of extinction in the wild due to intensive farming, as well as rare mosses and lichens. Many of the threats our wild flowers and plants face are down to the main culprits of intensive farming and habitat loss. In simple terms this means that the land is either built on or used in a different way.

The charity welcomes members and volunteers in many aspects of its conservation work, such as taking part in surveys and workdays. In the summer of 2004, for example, the Plantlife Poppy Survey was run with members of the public being invited to let the charity know if they have any wild poppies growing near them. Workdays can involve anything from pulling up poisonous ragwort on one of the charity’s nature reserves to clearing ponds of invasive plants, and they will definitely get you fit!

Plantlife also works with other organisations, like the RSPB and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, to promote the cause of wild plant conservation. As leading plant experts, earlier this year the charity published the Plant Diversity Challenge on behalf of DEFRA, the government department responsible for the environment, food and rural affairs. This groundbreaking document laid out the UK government’s conservation strategy until 2010.

Early in 2004, Plantlife International launched its most ambitious media campaign to date with the results of its nationwide poll, County Flowers. Tens of thousands of people across the country voted for a wild flower emblem to represent their county and the charity is now lobbying MPs and local authorities to have the list of over 100 wild flowers adopted. The list of winners range from the rare, such as pasque-flower for Cambridgeshire, to the familiar, like the foxglove for Birmingham, to the cultural, such as hop for Kent, and geographical, like Dorset heath – for Dorset!

If you’d like to join Plantlife International, the charity is offering a special three months’ free trial to Healthy Way readers who join before 31st January 2005. Accept the free trial to receive your first copy of the award-winning Plantlife magazine, plus the newsletter, Plants & People and a guide to the 22 nature reserves. If you are not impressed after three months, you can cancel your annual subscription (£16) before your normal 12 month membership starts. As an incentive, Plantlife will also give you a free copy of the Collins Guide to Wild Flowers. To join Plantlife International please call Lyn Yateman on 01722 342753, quoting Healthy Way.