Mossy Blankets
Thanks to Devon Environment Foundation, in addition to taking youngsters up to the high moor to meet farmers and making the mossy carpet; we have been experimenting with growing and planting sphagnum moss so that communities can get involved with peatland regeneration from where they live.
We hope to show through this project that there are many ways that communities can engage and get involved with the future of the moors through creativity and imagining a future in which the moorlands thrive.
Various schools and groups have become involved with making Mossy Blankets. The Mossy blankets are made of sheep’s fleece from Dartmoor, scoured and felted in a mill, then planted with Sphagnum moss sewn in and painted on top the blanket and then watered with rainwater so that the moss grows and flourishes. The aim is to take these blankets (the size of tomato trays) back on top of the moor and place them over bare areas of peat for peatland recovery.
We had a great day in north Plymouth with a wellbeing group in Tulgey Woods . They worked their magic with embroidery on the blankets and combined sphagnum mosses to create beautiful mossy blankets. We sat in the sun in the woods and shared our views on nature and it’s restorative powers. The women taking part had built up a beautiful group, working together, talking of cake(!), laughing with the stitching, sharing hope, and the future together.
University of Plymouth Biological Sciences department have taken on an old greenhouse, and thanks to Dr Demelza Carne, their greenhouse manager, we were able to work with some students and create some more mossy blankets using pulp from mashed up moss as paint, and lab grown moss kindly donated from Beadamoss. Our volunteer students, Lydia, Asher and Sonny all helped and have been keeping an eye on progress, watering with rainwater and seeing what happens. As students really interested in biodiversity, they have set up a new society called Plymouth University Biodiversity Society, find them on Instagram and get in touch if you are interested too!
Eggbuckland Community College in Plymouth have a science club. The club’s membership, ranging from 12 to 16 years old that have made some mossy blankets and have helped us keep some mossy blankets alive at the centre of their buildings in a garden. These blankets are outside and have occasionally been in a significant deluge of rain, they will still make their way up to the top of the moor, where sphagnum can grow back.
We are finding that it is quite a task to keep these blankets growing at a small scale in a garden or in school - the sphagnum moss needs to be kept wet - but once it takes hold, it seems to thrive. There could still be a place for some communities or farmers to grow it or plant it at a larger scale in the future.
For information about artificially growing sphagnum moss in lab conditions look at the Beadamoss website. Thanks to them for the donation of sterile sphagnum moss species for our experimental creative mossy blankets - healing plasters for small scale regeneration of peatland.
