Countryfile

Wiltshire (29x30)

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Wiltshire's Salisbury Plain is home to one of England's most successful conservation projects, the first new population of great bustards to be established anywhere in the world. John visits the project's HQ and wears a dehumanisation suit to help keep the birds' behaviour as wild as possible as he helps feed the latest batch of chicks as they prepare to fly the nest. Anita meets the contestants of the International Young Beekeepers competition at Marlborough College and visits the River Kennet, one of England's most important chalk streams and helps out the volunteers working hard to keep this valuable chalk stream flowing. Adam meets Simon Stott who runs a co-operative of farmers producing sheep's milk, which they turn into yoghurt and cheese. At the foot of Wiltshire's Marlborough Downs, artisanal flower grower Polly Nicholson is using the rich, fertile soils of the Calne valley to grow seasonal and old varieties of English flowers. This is farmland turned flower fields, and is part of a growing trend for traditional British blooms. Imported flowers are often grown intensively, non-organically and then flown half way around the world to British buyers, with most varieties available year-round. Polly has established a flower farm with environmental welfare at its heart providing species not usually seen in conventional bunches of flowers.