Let’s Grow Wild official launch with Neon Jungle and Gemma Cairney
This spring the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew has teamed up with female music act Neon Jungle in a campaign to inspire young people to sow, grow and get outdoors to enjoy UK native wild flowers. Having decided on giving our friends and family wild flower seeds as favours at our Wedding in 2012, I really want to share information about this worthy cause with you.
We in the UK have lost a devastating 97% of our native wild flower meadows in the last 70 years – this is unbelievable – leading to less colour in our lives and fewer butterflies, bees, pollinating bugs and birds.This thought makes me truly sad, I have great memories of sitting in my Grandfather’s garden admiring the multitude of life buzzing around his buddleia plant (a favourite of butterflies and bees). Thinking that the generations to come may not get to enjoy this simple pleasure makes me very sad. The Let’s Grow Wild campaign is all about making a difference by sowing beautiful native wild flowers– and getting outdoors to enjoy our beautiful countryside.
Asami, from Neon Jungle, says: “There are just 3% of our wild flower meadows left in the UK. We really wanted to get involved in the Grow Wild campaign because we hope that as a band we can make a real difference. We want to inspire our fans to get involved and sow some seeds!”
Watch footage from the exclusive gig below:
Neon Jungle, made up of four feisty ladies: Jess, Amira, Asami and Shereen who have just been confirmed to perform at this year’s Wireless Festival, have joined up with Let’s Grow Wild, a dynamic UK-wide initiative to inspire people to transform unloved spaces with beautiful native wild flowers, supported by the Big Lottery Fund.
The campaign launched earlier this month, with a special hot-ticket rooftop ‘Neons’ gig in London. BBC Radio 1 Presenter Gemma Cairney was on hand to share the flower power during the event which saw fans and their friends having a chance to meet the band, catch a sneak preview of the eagerly-awaited new single, Welcome to the Jungle and kick off the spring sowing season in style, transforming a cool urban rooftop with gorgeous wild flowers.
Jess, from Neon Jungle continues: “What we also love about the campaign is that everyone can take part. You don’t need a garden, you just need to look around you and there are so many places you can sow seeds. We will be getting creative and sowing our Grow Wild seeds at home and in different spaces across the UK when we’re on the road this spring.” Amira from Neon Jungle , says: “You can get really creative when sowing your seeds – you can really put your personality into it. People can show us what they’ve created, by uploading their pics to the Grow Wild Facebook page.”
Gay Coley, Director of Public Programmes for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew said: “As well as helping our wild flowers to flourish and bring life to unloved spaces, Grow Wild is about people re-connecting with the natural world. It’s about discovering and enjoying the beauty of our wild flowers and re-engaging with the spaces, places and people around us – and it’s brilliant that Neon Jungle are getting involved to help us to do this.”
Grow Wild is a dynamic £10.5m mass participation programme running until 2017. Funded by the Big Lottery Fund and led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Grow Wild sets out to encourage people to get together to transform unloved spaces, gardens and windowsills into wildlife-friendly wild flower patches. So this Spring do your bit for the UK’s native species and sow some wild flowers!
In collaboration with Grow Wild**
