The approach has produced striking early results at Loch Craignish in Argyll, including a 97% survival rate in a 2025 trial. In another restoration plot, seabed coverage increased from 10% to more than 70% within 15 months. Together, the trials have created about 0.3 hectares of new seagrass habitat, offering a promising alternative for restoring an ecosystem that supports marine life, stabilises sediments and stores carbon.
Seawilding, a Scottish marine restoration charity, has been experimenting with transplanting mature Zostera marina shoots from healthy donor meadows into areas where seagrass has been lost. Britain’s seagrass meadows have suffered decades of decline, but a community-led project on Scotland’s west coast is showing that restoring them may not always require starting from seeds.
From 2024, Seawilding began testing a different strategy by taking adult shoots from existing healthy meadows and transplanting them into suitable restoration sites Seawilding’s project also grew out of several years of experimentation. The organisation says it trialled multiple restoration methods before the adult-shoot approach began producing the results reported in 2025. Because the 97% figure did not come from a single attempt that immediately succeeded, that history is important.
The organisation says that, over roughly a decade, UK restoration efforts have focused largely on seed-based approaches, but establishing large areas of new meadow has often proved difficult. It followed repeated trials to determine how best to collect, transport and establish the plants. The Scottish project is notable not only for its restoration technique but also for its community-led structure. Seawilding describes itself as Scotland’s first community-based marine habitat restoration charity, and local volunteers have been involved in monitoring, planting and other stages of the work.
Seawilding began its community-led restoration work in Loch Craignish, Argyll, with earlier efforts concentrating on collecting and planting seagrass seeds. The organisation’s earlier Loch Craignish project was developed with technical support from Project Seagrass and research and environmental monitoring from the Scottish Association of Marine Sciences.
A 2025 peer-reviewed study of a major UK seagrass restoration project in Wales found that changing the approach towards co-production helped rebuild trust between the restoration team and local stakeholders. The significance of the project therefore lies less in the claim that one Scottish community has solved seagrass restoration and more in the evidence that a relatively simple change in strategy can produce striking early results. Community participation has also been important for understanding the condition of the existing meadows before restoration begins. NatureScot’s case study describes local residents surveying Loch Craignish using transects and quadrats to record seagrass coverage, while snorkellers and paddleboarders have helped with field observations and seed collection. This community involvement fits a wider body of research showing that restoration projects can benefit when local communities are involved in designing and delivering conservation rather than being treated simply as observers. The study also found that the restored site had begun showing positive ecological development, although large-scale continuous meadow recovery remained incomplete. Rather than waiting for seeds to establish naturally, the team is moving mature plants into suitable habitat and monitoring whether they survive and expand. If the approach continues to work at different sites without damaging donor meadows, it could become another practical tool for restoring Britain’s fragmented underwater meadows.
The earlier project also held public restoration events where residents could learn about seagrass and participate in collection and planting activities.