Exmoor Ponies are helping high-tech firm Singer Instruments

Business Environment Farming News West Somerset News

High-tech Somerset firm – and ponies – helping Exmoor return to nature

Paul JonesOctober 6, 20250 Comment0

A HIGH-tech Somerset firm has gone old school to help protect a county tradition.

Singer Instruments, which creates robotics to assist biological research, has joined a project to create wildflower meadows on Exmoor – and boost the area’s wild pony population.

Exmoor ponies are helping the firm create the meadow at its Roadwater headquarters as part of the Sowing the Seeds initiative.

Singer is one of more than 50 sites taking part in the scheme, which aims to create more wildflower meadows across Exmoor National Park.

Lucy Cornish, Sowing the Seeds project officer, said: “Wildflower meadows are habitats rich in wildlife. They are grasslands that were traditionally managed for hay so left to grow and flower over the spring and summer, feeding and sheltering a wide array of wildlife, but most of these habitats have been lost in the landscape.

Exmoor Ponies are doing their bit for the National Park

“Since 2021, Exmoor National Park Authority has been running a project called Sowing the Seeds, working with landowners, farmers, community groups, schools, and parish councils, to create, restore, and promote wildflower meadows and habitats across the National Park.

“We are working with communities to restore this rare habitat and make more wildflower areas that will in time join up to create a thriving nature network, where wildlife can flourish.”

Singer Instruments said its work with companies harnessing nature to find or engineer new microbial organisms to tackle some of humanity’s greatest challenges, was the perfect compliment to Sowing the Seeds.

CEO of the firm, Harry Singer, said: “Humanity needs biology now, more than ever! We’re super proud to be making a global impact in this regard, as well as a local impact by creating our own wildflower meadow. Thanks very much to Exmoor National Park Authority for driving this initiative.”

A successful grant application to the Farming in Protected Landscapes Fund in 2023 funded the re-fencing of the field before Exmoor Ponies were introduced.

Pony owners, Lloyd and Gemma Parry, said: “Exmoor Ponies are mentioned in the Doomsday Book and are renowned worldwide for their hardiness and skilled conservation grazing.

“The current three; Ambrose, Megs Mary, and Hazel, were born on Dunkery in the Tawbitts herd, bred by the late Jackie Ablett and Gill Langdon.

The ponies have grazed the meadow at Singer Instruments in West Somerset

“The ponies keep the grass in check, eat through brambles and scrub, provide fertilizer for the seeds, and get a workout in the steep field in the process.”

Wildflower seeds harvested from donor sites were sown by staff once the ponies had grazed the meadow in the first year, with top-up seeds also being sown in the second year.

Health, safety and environment manager for Singer Instruments, Sally Parish, added: “The meadow is now in year three of a five year management plan and already there has been an improvement in the variety and cover of flora.

“More Exmoor Pony visits will be required in the years to come which we look forward to as they give us a warm welcome in the mornings, hanging their heads over the gate to see what’s going on.”