How Premier Polytunnels is supporting Wilder Humber’s Sea View Nursery with commercial polytunnels for coastal habitat restoration
When a conservation project is working to restore one of the largest seascapes in the North Sea, the humble polytunnel might not be the first thing that springs to mind. But at Wilder Humber's Sea View Nursery near Saltfleetby on the Lincolnshire coast, three custom-built commercial polytunnels from Premier Polytunnels are quietly doing some of the most important work of all: growing the plants that will stabilise sand dunes, rebuild saltmarsh, and bring wildlife back to the Humber Estuary.
We were proud to design, manufacture and construct these commercial polytunnels for the site, and in May 2025 our Managing Directors visited Sea View Nursery for the project's open day to see the nursery in action and meet the team behind it. Here's the story of the project, the plants being propagated, and why the right polytunnel specification matters so much when the end goal is restoring an entire coastline.
Rebuilding the North Sea Seascape: What is the Wilder Humber Project?
The Humber Estuary is one of the UK’s most ecologically vital marine environments, serving as a hub for migratory birds, marine life, and unique intertidal habitats. However, decades of coastal development, climate change, and habitat degradation have left ecosystems like seagrass beds and saltmarshes severely diminished. To combat this, Wilder Humber was formed.
Wilder Humber is a five-year, £2.5 million habitat restoration programme delivered through a partnership between Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and green energy company Ørsted. Describing itself as the largest seascape restoration project of its kind in the North Sea, the programme brings together sand dune, saltmarsh, seagrass and native oyster restoration to rebuild the natural defences and biodiversity of the Humber Estuary.
Key conservation goals of the initiative include:
- Restoring 30 hectares of lost seagrass meadows (Zostera marina).
- Developing half a hectare of saltmarsh habitat.
- Reintroducing 400,000 native oysters (Ostrea edulis) to restore historical oyster reef beds.
The scale of the ambition is significant – to grow the plants needed at the scale this restoration demands, Wilder Humber needed a dedicated facility to propagate, harden off, and grow vital native coastal plants before transplanting them into harsh marine environments. That's where Sea View Nursery, and the polytunnels that make it possible, come in.
Propagating Pioneer Species: The Role of Sea View Nursery
Sea View Nursery acts as the engine room for Wilder Humber’s botanical restoration. To ensure high survival rates once planted in the intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes, native species must be propagated under precisely controlled, optimal growing conditions.
The nursery specialises in cultivating key pioneer saltmarsh and intertidal plant species, including:
- Sea Lavender (Limonium vulgare): Known for its vibrant purple summer blooms, this species stabilises saltmarsh sediments and provides essential habitat for pollinators.
- Common Reed (Phragmites australis): Provides structural strength along marsh fringes, absorbing wave energy and preventing coastal erosion.
- Sea Poacher / Scurvy Grass (Cochlearia officinalis): Tough, saline-tolerant species vital to intertidal biodiversity.
- Saltmarsh Rush and Glasswort: Essential pioneer plants that trap silt and help build up land organically against rising sea levels.
Cultivating wild coastal species from harvested local seeds presents unique environmental challenges. Young seedlings require shelter from extreme winds, torrential rain, and heat stress, while still needing adequate airflow and temperature regulation to build resilience.
Why Sea View Nursery Needed Purpose-Built Polytunnels
Saltmarsh and sand dune species are notoriously difficult to propagate. Many of the plants Wilder Humber's team are growing – species suited to salty, waterlogged or free-draining sandy conditions – need very specific, carefully managed growing environments before they're hardy enough to survive being planted out on an exposed, tidal coastline.
Growing outdoors from seed, at scale, and in a way that produces consistent, healthy plug plants ready for restoration work simply isn't realistic on the open Lincolnshire coast. The nursery team needed covered growing space that could:
- Protect young, vulnerable plants from wind, driving rain and salt spray while they establish.
- Provide a controllable microclimate to support propagation of coastal specialist species.
- Offer enough covered floor space to grow saltmarsh and dune plants at the volumes a habitat restoration programme requires.
- Remain practical and comfortable for the volunteers and staff who spend hours at a time tending, measuring and recording plant growth.
- Be robust enough to stand up to a genuinely exposed east coast site, season after season.
This is why Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust turned to Premier Polytunnels to design and build three bespoke commercial polytunnels specifically for the nursery.
Why Premier Polytunnels Were Chosen: Tailored Engineering for Conservation
Two of the three polytunnels at Sea View measure 16ft wide by 48ft long, and the third measures 16ft wide x 42ft long, giving the nursery a substantial amount of covered growing space across the site. Each UK manufactured polytunnel was designed and manufactured at our factory in Lancashire and constructed by our expert team at the nursery.
The polytunnels feature robust frames, engineered with heavy-duty, high tensile 50mm galvanised steel, and highly durable Thermal Anti Drip UV-stabilised polythene covers to withstand the harsh coastal weather. Each one was also specified with:
- Triple ridge kit
- Aluminium base rail kit
- Aluminium side rail kit on both sides
- Ventilation screen kit on both sides
- Staging supports on both sides
- Ground cover kit
This specification was chosen to provide durability, efficient ventilation and practical growing space for the nursery team.
Engineered for Growth: How Our Polytunnel Specifications Protect Seedlings
Here is how our engineered polytunnel specification directly supports Wilder Humber’s restoration work:
Triple ridge kits
The triple ridges – heavy-duty galvanised steel bars that attach to the polytunnel hoops – strengthen the overall structures while improving stability across the tunnels’ length. For a coastal site that can experience challenging weather conditions, structural robustness is an important consideration for protecting valuable plant stock.
Staging supports
To propagate thousands of seedlings efficiently, durable and reliable staging supports are needed. With steel staging supports on both sides of the polytunnels, the team at Wilder Humber are able to maximise usable growing space, allowing trays and pots to be raised off the ground for easier tending. These supports – fitted with timber workbench tops – also provide better airflow around the plants, and more comfortable working conditions for the nursery's staff and volunteers.
Aluminium side rail kit with ventilation screens
Aluminium side rails, secured at 1m high on the polytunnel hoops, provide a durable, low-maintenance cover fixing system that supports long-term performance in a demanding coastal environment. With ventilation netting installed between the aluminium side rails and base rails, the nursery team have precise control over airflow, ventilation and temperature – essential when growing plants adapted to the very specific conditions of a saltmarsh or dune environment.
Aluminium base rail kits
Aluminium base rails, attached to the polytunnel hoops at ground level, provide a secure, long-lasting fixing point for the side ventilation netting and a stable foundation for the whole structure.
Ground cover kits
Ground cover is particularly valuable in a conservation nursery. The ground cover kits help suppress weeds, reduce maintenance requirements, improve site hygiene and create cleaner working conditions for propagation and plant handling.
Every element of the polytunnel specification was chosen with the nursery's real working needs in mind. By providing robust, well-ventilated commercial polytunnels with professional growing features, we have helped create a nursery capable of producing native plants on the scale needed for ambitious conservation work.
Cultivating Resilience: What's Growing at Sea View
Inside the polytunnels, the Wilder Humber team is trialling and developing different propagation techniques, refining best practice, and building a genuine bank of knowledge about growing these under-studied coastal species – expertise that has real value for saltmarsh and dune restoration projects well beyond the Humber.
The nursery is designed to be accessible, with plenty of tasks that can be carried out sitting down inside the polytunnels, alongside more physical jobs such as measuring, monitoring and recording plant health and growth as part of the nursery's wider trials.
Species so far planted at Sea View as part of the initial trials for the project include samphire, sea thrift, wild carrot and viper's bugloss. These plants will be used to create a living seed bank at the nursery, allowing volunteers and interns to process, record and maintain a highly precise botanical repository to monitor baseline germination rates.
A First-Hand Look: Our Managing Directors Visit Sea View
In May 2025, the Managing Directors of Premier Polytunnels, Deborah Tancock and Alexander Wood, attended Wilder Humber's open day at Sea View Nursery, taking the opportunity to tour the site, see the polytunnels at work and hear directly from the project team about the progress being made.
It's one thing to design and build a set of commercial polytunnels to a specification; it's another to see them in daily use, supporting a project with genuine national significance for coastal habitat restoration. Visiting Sea View gave our team a first-hand understanding of exactly how the nursery operates day to day, and reinforced just how important the details of a polytunnel's build – from frame strength to ventilation – are when the structure is being asked to support such specialist, high-value conservation work.
Breakthrough Success: Tracking the Impact of the Seagrass Trials
In February 2026, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust announced promising results from the project’s first major seagrass restoration trial, showing that large scale recovery is possible.
In the trial, the Wilder Humber team compared three planting techniques over a full growing season:
- Directly injecting seeds into the seabed to kick-start new growth, using Dispenser Injection Seeding (DIS).
- Placing seeds in hessian ‘seed bags’.
- Transplanting small intact patches of seagrass to create strong, resilient patches.
The results showed that a combined approach works best: DIS created the highest number of new patches, demonstrating that it is highly effective for rapid early colonisation, while transplanting produced larger, stable patches, giving new meadows a significant head start.
This breakthrough will impact seagrass recovery projects across the UK, well beyond the Humber Estuary.
Beyond Horticulture: Why This Project Matters
The Wilder Humber programme is a reminder that polytunnels aren't just for allotments, market gardens and commercial fruit and vegetable growers. The same principles that make a polytunnel effective for a busy smallholding – a strong frame, reliable ventilation, and a controllable growing environment – are exactly what's needed to help rebuild a wild, resilient coastline for the next generation.
At Premier Polytunnels, we've spent over 35 years as a trusted UK polytunnel manufacturer, designing and producing structures for growers of every kind, from first-time allotment growers to large scale commercial operations. Supporting a project like Wilder Humber, and seeing our heavy-duty polytunnels contribute directly to restoring saltmarsh, sand dunes and biodiversity along the Humber Estuary, is exactly the kind of work we're proud to be part of.
If you're planning a commercial polytunnel project – whether for horticulture, conservation, or anything in between – get in touch with our team to find out how we can help design a solution built around your site and your goals.
*To find out more about the wider Wilder Humber programme, visit Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust or explore the project's interactive story map.