Long Mead's Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project.

The Windrush and Evenlode have fragments of ancient Floodplain Meadows, which are now a rare and almost forgotten habitat, seen only as relics of past agricultural practices. The ecosystems services they supply, however, are not only relevant to 21C food production - producing hay and providing grazing with no artificial inputs - but in an era of severe biodiversity loss, they are also biodiversity 'hot-spots', additionally they mitigate flood risk, they remove eutrophic pollutants, they sequester large amounts of carbon, and of course, provide delight. Floodplain Meadows will be an intrinsic part of any landscape-scale habitat restoration efforts in our cluster. Long Mead is a Domesday Book meadow that is the origin of the Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project (TVWMRP), whose mission is to link up the fragments of ancient meadows that remain by restoring intervening meadows that have beeen managed as arable fields or pastures. TVWMRP has taken a distinctive approach,  which engages landowners, farmers, and academics in the project so that the creation and management of the meadows is a win-win for people and nature. Come and walk the meadow to learn more, how it fits into a farming system and the opportunities for revenue generation.