Our last harvest of rye on our agroforestry field at Sheepdrove. From this month the field is being returned to nature. Our rewilding project relies on natural regeneration; we have no plans for mass tree planting. Since 1995 Sheepdrove has planted thousands of trees and miles of hedgerows and we’ve had quite enough of plastic tree guards. This time it is nature who is going to be in the driving seat and the land managers will be grazing livestock.
Rewilding at Sheepdrove creates another ecologically diverse wildlife habitat in our mosaic of valuable ecosystems which includes species-rich grassland, ancient oak woodland, chalk downland, dew ponds, young native woodland, scrub and hedgerows, reedbed system with lake and wildlife ponds, plus certified organic, mixed rotational farmland with conservation practices such as sowing wild bird seed mixtures, creating beetle banks and wildflower margins, and regenerative agriculture methods including legume-rich herbal pasture for grazing livestock and growing wheat and beans undersown with clover.
