Nature’s Footprints Through Dorset, Wimborne | Posted on July 17th, 2026 | return to news

Wimborne group buzzes with excitement

The Bees’ Needs Champions Award was presented to Wilding Wimborne at RHS Wisley’s Bees’ Needs Science Festival.

Wilding Wimborne has won a prestigious Bees’ Needs Champions Award. The awards are organised annually by the government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) to recognise and celebrate examples of exceptional initiatives undertaken to support pollinators by local authorities, community groups, farmers, businesses and individuals.

This recognition comes in light of the work Wilding Wimborne has done following on from receiving a Bee Friendly Town Award in 2022. The group continues to raise awareness at events of the plight of our bees and has expanded and relaunched the town’s Bee Home Trail as a contribution to Wimborne’s year as Dorset’s Town of Culture. To learn about the trail, visit https://planetwimborne.org/whats-the-buzz/.

The Bees’ Needs Champions Award was presented at a ceremony at RHS Wisley’s Bees’ Needs Science Festival on 14 July by Mary Creagh, Defra’s Minister for Nature. Congratulating the winners, she spoke about how vital their work was, and how impressed and moved she had been by their achievements, the range of projects and the number of people of all ages who were involved.

Wilding Wimborne also received congratulations from Vikki Slade MP, who said: “This recognition reflects the passion, dedication and community spirit you have shown in supporting our vital pollinators. The work of champions like you is invaluable – not only in helping pollinating species to survive and thrive, but also in inspiring others to take action. Your work could not be more timely or more important. I am firmly committed to championing environmental issues at a national level and I’m proud to support initiatives like yours that make such a meaningful impact locally.”

Linda Bunting, founder and chairperson of Wilding Wimborne, said: “We’re absolutely thrilled to receive a Bees’ Needs Champion Award from Defra, but we’re not content to rest on our laurels. We are currently in partnership with Wimborne Men’s Shed who are making us a bee wall. This will contain over 30 bee homes, and local children will be invited over the summer to help to fill the hexagons with bamboo tubes. Our bees need all the help we can give them.”