Volunteers are hoping to bring a park to life by creating a wildflower meadow that will benefit pollinators, insects, and other wildlife in the area. 

Green-fingered Brampton residents are taking steps to turn parts of Irthing Park into a space teeming with wildflowers and wildlife by sowing a wide variety of native British seeds. 

The initiative, led by members of Brampton Green and Wild, is a collaboration between local residents, Cumberland Council, and Cumbria Wildlife Trust's Get Cumbria Buzzing, Not Buffering project which has been funded by Fibrus broadband.

"It was really nice to see people all coming together to work towards making a good area for the community," said Lisa Bennington, the resident who has organised the project.

"As well as the benefits to wildlife, there's a lot of benefits to the community. So, we've got the primary school nearby and the play park, so children will be able to actually see these insects and flowers, and look at them and know that they're there and what they are, because I think it's great for children to actually know these things.

"If we don't see them and we don't know them and name them, how can we care about them?"

Lisa initially reached out to Cumberland Council, which maintains the field, to ask them if they could leave sections of the field uncut "to benefit our pollinators and for children to experience nature."

When they gave the thumbs up and it was clear that there was local support for the plan, she was encouraged to speak to Cumbria Wildlife Trust to see how they could help. 

Native wildflower meadows and insect species have been declining in the country for some time now, so it is the hopes of Lisa, and other volunteers, that this will do a little bit to push the pause button on this drop. 

She said: "All these insects, they feed all the hedgehogs and the bats and the swifts. We've got swifts which are red listed in Brampton and the frogs and all of these things.

"If you lose these flowers and you lose the insects, you're also losing all these other animals. 

"That's why it's really important on the wildlife front because providing this diversity, a lot of the insects thrive on the native food plants."