Tower Mustard

This collaborative conservation programme is bringing together people and organisations across London to protect and restore tower mustard (Turritis glabra), a species threatened across the UK and one of the capital’s rarest plants. The London-wide initiative will see volunteer citizen scientists grow this scarce species at home before replanting at carefully selected sites across Greater London. Tower mustard is currently thought to survive at just 30 sites across England and currently at only two sites in London. 

Volunteer opportunities:

Tower Mustard Guardians – Volunteers will attend a training session to learn about Tower mustard and how to grow it. You will then be given a growing kit to take home including wild Tower mustard seeds, plant pots and wildflower compost. Once the training is over you will take your growing kit home and grow a small number of plants and look after them throughout the spring and summer. At the end of the summer you will bring the plants back to us and will have the option of joining planting days to plant them out into the wild at special sites across south west London. You will need a small amount of outdoor space to grow the plants – this can be a windowsill, balcony or garden. This opportunity is open to all – no previous plant growing or nature conservation experience needed!

Tower Mustard planting volunteers – in late summer we will be looking for additional volunteers to help us plant out the newly grown Tower mustard plants at the specially selected receptor sites across greater London. This will be a one-off commitment, and you will be helping us to establish new wild populations of the plants at sites where there is suitable habitat and where Tower mustard may once have grown in the past.