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This year marks a significant milestone for conservation across the Shropshire Hills. The Shropshire Hills Landscape Trust celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2026 — a decade of channelling community support into practical, ground-level conservation work right across the National Landscape.

Since 2016, the Trust has awarded grants to 136 projects, distributing over £196,000 to the community groups, parish councils and individuals who form the living backbone of conservation in these hills. The funding comes principally from the Trust's Friends — supporters who pay regular subscriptions — and the results are tangible in hedgerows, meadows, woodlands and school grounds across Shropshire. Alongside the Friends' subscriptions, the Trust is grateful for the generous support of The Millichope Foundation, whose substantial contribution helps make the grant programme possible.

The 2026 grant round reflects the breadth and ambition of what this model makes possible. Twelve projects have shared £16,088, and the range is striking. Clunbury Parish Council has been awarded £1,564 towards restoring heathland on Black Hill — once fine whinberry country, subsequently overwhelmed by bracken and self-seeded Sitka Spruce. Sixteen volunteers are being trained in the safe and effective use of scythes to continue the painstaking work of winning the hill back.

Meadow supporters will be particularly interested in the grant to the Marches Meadow Group (MMG), which has received £1,000 towards evaluating the impact of its survey and advisory work since 2016. MMG has been conducting free plant surveys of members' fields for a decade now, writing up results as advisory reports and suggesting actions to enhance diversity. The evaluation will assess the difference this has made to meadow quality across the Group's core area — useful evidence for the work we all care about.

Elsewhere, the Rea Valley Pine Marten Group is installing camera traps at Oaks Wood near Pontesbury to survey for pine martens (£1,500), and the Stretton Area Community Wildlife Group is partnering with St Lawrence's Primary School to connect Year 5 and 6 pupils with wildlife identification and wildflower gardening (£1,820). Six parishes — Bishop's Castle, Church Stretton, Edgton, Hope Bowdler, Lydbury North and Wistanstow — are collaborating to develop long linear meadow verges as connected wildlife habitat (£2,000). CPRE Shropshire has also received a grant to support an upcoming Hedgerows in the Hills event at Acton Scott Heritage Farm, which will engage children and young people with the countryside and its wonderful hedgerows.

Rachel Cockett, Chair of the Shropshire Hills Landscape Trust, is honest about the challenge: applications consistently exceed available funds. "The need for conservation work has never been greater, but maintaining our grant-giving capacity becomes more difficult each year." The anniversary year is being used as an opportunity to strengthen the fund and build towards the next decade.

For those of us working on Marches meadows and wider nature recovery, the Trust’s model — small grants, deep community partnerships, a long-term commitment to the landscape — is one worth celebrating and supporting. Ten years in, it's producing results that matter.

To support the Trust's work in its anniversary year, donations can be made online 

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