Welcome to Long Mead
Long Mead Local Wildlife Site is an Oxfordshire farm and Local Wildlife Site (LWS) on the River Thames at Swinford owned by Catriona Bass and Professor Kevan Martin. It combines a 10ha rare wildflower hay meadow (of which only 4 square miles remain in the UK) with freshwater habitat, woodland and a traditional orchard habitat.
We have owned it for 22 years, producing nutrient rich hay and grazing, without pesticides or fertilisers and selling our orchard produce to the local market. It is a small contribution to 21st century sustainable agriculture. For two decades we have run care-farming and educational visits on a semi-voluntary basis, working with local government, schools and NGOs to share the educational and therapeutic benefits of this beautiful site.
We have recently set up three environmental initiatives: The Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project (TVWMRP), the Long Mead Biodiversity Research Project and The Nature Recovery Network. See below for details.
In 2013, we were awarded for our work in the Bayer Face Farming and Countryside Education Awards. In 2020, we won Ecover's Fertilise the Future Competition in partnership with the Open University's Floodplain Meadow Partnership and BBOWT. We are carrying out 50ha of meadow restoration for the project. It is also funding our long term invertebrate study being undertaken by Mike Wilson of the Museum of Wales. The Open University are for the restoration of 50ha of floodplain meadow accompanied by research into the carbon sequestration capacity of biodiverse floodplain meadows, in partnership with the Open University's Floodplain Meadow Partnership and the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust. In 2022, we were awarded the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire's Climate Heroes Action Award. In 2021, we established the Long Mead Foundation to enable us to seek more funding for our work.
1. The Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project (TVWMRP) aims to increase the UK’s four square miles of floodplain hay meadow to support the creation of a nature recovery network for Oxfordshire by working with neighbouring farmers and landowners to restore and recreate floodplain meadows along the Thames, where much of the remaining habitat lies in designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest and Local Wildlife Sites.
2. Long Mead Biodiversity Research Project brings together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines, experts and professionals from NGO organisations, as well as the farming community whose long-term practical knowledge of the land is sometimes undervalued in the environmental debate. Long Mead Biodiversity Research Project is intended to be a long-term engagement with a threatened environment at a time of rapid change.
3. The Nature Recovery Network is a place-based, bottom-up nature recovery project. Its aim is to develop the means whereby the whole community of a parish (its local experts, enthusiasts, councillors and businesses, as well as its more vulnerable members) can act collectively and effectively to reverse, on its own lands, the calamitous decline in biodiversity that is reported countrywide.
Restoration being carried out by the community connects into the wider landscape being restored under the TVWMRP. This not only facilitates the creation of wildlife corridors, it can enhance community engagement by the inclusion of their work into a landscape-scale project. Since 2018, we have been consulted by government organisations, community groups and environmental NGOs on aspects of setting up local networks for floodplain meadow restoration and community restoration efforts.
The idea of connecting up rare habitats to stem their decline has been around for some time. In 2011, John Lawton coined the term Bigger Better More Joined up. We live in the Oxford Meadows and Farmoor Conservation Target Area which was established in 2006 but little work had been done on the ground when we initiated the TVWMRP in 2018 and all the environmental NGOs talked about the difficulty of what’s known as ‘landowner engagement’.
So we asked ourselves whether, being embedded in the local landscape with long-term relationships with farmers and landowners - but also with local academics, NGOs and people in the community, we might have a chance of creating a bottom-up network approach to the problem. Given that most of us are here for the long-term, might his be a way of building the knowledge, connections and commitment necessary for saving the local environment from exponential decline.
We have owned it for 22 years, producing nutrient rich hay and grazing, without pesticides or fertilisers and selling our orchard produce to the local market. It is a small contribution to 21st century sustainable agriculture. For two decades we have run care-farming and educational visits on a semi-voluntary basis, working with local government, schools and NGOs to share the educational and therapeutic benefits of this beautiful site.
We have recently set up three environmental initiatives: The Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project (TVWMRP), the Long Mead Biodiversity Research Project and The Nature Recovery Network. See below for details.
In 2013, we were awarded for our work in the Bayer Face Farming and Countryside Education Awards. In 2020, we won Ecover's Fertilise the Future Competition in partnership with the Open University's Floodplain Meadow Partnership and BBOWT. We are carrying out 50ha of meadow restoration for the project. It is also funding our long term invertebrate study being undertaken by Mike Wilson of the Museum of Wales. The Open University are for the restoration of 50ha of floodplain meadow accompanied by research into the carbon sequestration capacity of biodiverse floodplain meadows, in partnership with the Open University's Floodplain Meadow Partnership and the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust. In 2022, we were awarded the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire's Climate Heroes Action Award. In 2021, we established the Long Mead Foundation to enable us to seek more funding for our work.
1. The Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project (TVWMRP) aims to increase the UK’s four square miles of floodplain hay meadow to support the creation of a nature recovery network for Oxfordshire by working with neighbouring farmers and landowners to restore and recreate floodplain meadows along the Thames, where much of the remaining habitat lies in designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest and Local Wildlife Sites.
2. Long Mead Biodiversity Research Project brings together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines, experts and professionals from NGO organisations, as well as the farming community whose long-term practical knowledge of the land is sometimes undervalued in the environmental debate. Long Mead Biodiversity Research Project is intended to be a long-term engagement with a threatened environment at a time of rapid change.
3. The Nature Recovery Network is a place-based, bottom-up nature recovery project. Its aim is to develop the means whereby the whole community of a parish (its local experts, enthusiasts, councillors and businesses, as well as its more vulnerable members) can act collectively and effectively to reverse, on its own lands, the calamitous decline in biodiversity that is reported countrywide.
Restoration being carried out by the community connects into the wider landscape being restored under the TVWMRP. This not only facilitates the creation of wildlife corridors, it can enhance community engagement by the inclusion of their work into a landscape-scale project. Since 2018, we have been consulted by government organisations, community groups and environmental NGOs on aspects of setting up local networks for floodplain meadow restoration and community restoration efforts.
The idea of connecting up rare habitats to stem their decline has been around for some time. In 2011, John Lawton coined the term Bigger Better More Joined up. We live in the Oxford Meadows and Farmoor Conservation Target Area which was established in 2006 but little work had been done on the ground when we initiated the TVWMRP in 2018 and all the environmental NGOs talked about the difficulty of what’s known as ‘landowner engagement’.
So we asked ourselves whether, being embedded in the local landscape with long-term relationships with farmers and landowners - but also with local academics, NGOs and people in the community, we might have a chance of creating a bottom-up network approach to the problem. Given that most of us are here for the long-term, might his be a way of building the knowledge, connections and commitment necessary for saving the local environment from exponential decline.
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