The Flora of the Fells events festival celebrates one of its most successful years thanks to help from wildlife and environment organizations and other partners.

The 2010 Flora of the Fells Festival has seen over 200 events run since April by more than 50 groups and organisations throughout Cumbria with more than 3000 people attending events.

The Festival aims to encourage as many people as possible, to get out, explore and find out about Cumbria's amazing upland landscapes and wildlife through lots of different events. This year it included family activity days at Glenridding, Windermere and Acorn Bank, bee identification walks and gardening talks, arts and crafts, haymeadow walks, family tree planting events, farm visits, local food events and practical conservation activities.

The events festival is part of the Flora of the Fells project which also works with schools and produces colourful and informative publications about the flowers, wildlife and landscapes of the Cumbrian uplands. Since 2003 the Flora of the Fells project has run five festivals, with over 600 events attracting more than 7000 people and has introduced over 2500 children from 50 schools to Cumbrian wildlife and landscapes.

Sustainability and climate change are underlying themes of the project, which is run in partnership by Friends of the Lake District (the Lake District's only landscape charity) and Natural England.

As well as funding from the LDNPA Sustainable Development Fund, the Flora of the Fells project has been supported this year by tourism businesses keen to help raise awareness of conservation issues in the Lake District by fundraising activities through a Nurture Lakeland tourism and conservation membership scheme. This has included the sponsorship by Ullswater Steamers of a Flora of the Fells landscape guide to the Helvellyn area.

Flora of the Fells Festival Officer Sue Manson said: 'We've been delighted with Ullswater Steamers support of the Flora of the Fells project and it's been mutually beneficial working together on events such as the Family Activity days at Glenridding pier. We now need to secure funding to continue to run our education work next year and another events festival in 2012. If there are any businesses out there who would be interested in helping sponsor our work please get in touch.'

Rachel Bell, Marketing Manager of Ullswater Steamers said: 'The biodiversity of the Ullswater Valley is a key element in our success and as a business we are keen to promote sustainability to help reduce tourism impacts on our environment.'

For more information about the festival see www.floraofthefells.com