In 2018, we initiated two major projects at Long Mead: The Long Mead Biodiversity Research Project and the Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project (TVWMRP). TVWMRP is a community-driven initiative that aims to connect up the fragments of ancient floodplain wildflower meadow along the Thames (of which only 4 square miles remain in the UK) by restoring or re-creating the intervening meadows to create a continuous meadow network. In the last 6 years, we have connected up over 200 hectares of ancient and restored meadow on the Thames around Swinford, by creating meadows in between. Our neighbour to neighbour approach has meant that a continuous wildlife corridor is already forming up and downstream from Long Mead. We are also working on creating a meadow network on the Cherwell River in Oxford. In July 2020, we undertook the re-creation of Christ Church Meadows, using seed from Long Mead. (Runner up for Oxford University's Vice Chancellor's Award for Sustainability in 2023). In July 2021 we extended the floodplain meadow restoration, opposite the Marston Meadows Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) on the Cherwell River by restoring 10 acres of meadow for Merton College. In 2024, we helped Oxford University Parks to restore another 1.5 acres close to Music Meadow. In 2025, we will support Magdalen College and Lady Margaret Hall College to create meadows on the Cherwell.
Part of our restoration programme includes propagating slow growing and rarer species by hand. This part of the project brings together the whole community including the Scouts, the Schools, the Beavers and our social farming participants (adults with learning disabilities and autism) with whom we have been working for two decades. The group has grown organically since 2020 and we now find that we are also benefitting people with a wide range of mental and physical challenges. We also have wonderful long-term partners in FarmAbility and Bridewell gardens.
In December 2020, we won a grant from Ecover in partnership with Open University and BBOWT, (UK winner of 770 applicants from three countries). We are restoring 50ha for this project. As part of this project, the Open University is studying carbon sequestration in floodplain meadows under restoration. Our first two years' data suggest that they may be as good as peat bogs at storing carbon.
The Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project was featured in Rivers to Coast, a documentary made for COP26 by Oxford University's Nature-Based Solutions Initiative (watch from 2mins 20secs).
As part of our research programme, we are carrying out long-term botanical surveys of restoration sites with members of the Corallian Group who are also members of Ashmolean Natural History Society of Oxfordshire. We are undertaking a long-term study of pollinators and other invertebrates in floodplain meadows and the extent to which their numbers and diversity might increase with habitat restoration. This study is being carried out by Mike Wilson of the Museum of Wales and Ryan Mitchell of the Natural History Museum in Oxford. We are also collaborating with Oxford University Zoology Dept (Global Malaise Program) and Oxford Brookes University, Conservation Ecology Programme and School of Education. In 2021, we got a Green Recovery Challenge Fund grant in partnership with the Freshwater Habitats Trust's Building Oxfordshire's Freshwater Network Project. This has contributed to our restoration and research in 2022-2023. We have also received significant funding from Natural England's Seedcorn Fund for the creation of Nature Recovery Networks. In June 2023, we presented our connected community approach to landscape-scale restoration to Natural England. NE Nature Recovery Network Advisors visited Long Mead from the 12 Regional Teams across the country.
Fundamental to our project is integration of floodplain hay meadows, and the knowledge of those who farm them, into 21st century agriculture and agricultural policy.
Nature Recovery Network Advisors from Natural England's 12 Regional Teams visit Long Mead to understand our connected-community approach to landscape-scale restoration
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 Open University visit to Long Mead's Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project, June 2021, with Tony Juniper (Natural England Chair), Emma Howard Boyd (Environment Agency Chair). David Gowing, Professor of botany at the Open University, discusses how floodplain meadows store carbon as effectively and more securely than trees. Long Mead's Professor Kevan Martin points out that our meadow has been performing what we now call ecosystem services (flood mitigation, water purification, food production, and beautiful spaces for people) for 1000 years. Species-rich meadows are the most biodiverse habitats in the UK.
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