Project Case Studies

Wilder Horsham District works closely with local communities and landowners to help develop and support project ideas that create and connect habitats and support biodiversity and its recovery across Horsham District. To achieve this, we provide site visits and expert land management advice, offer grant funding through our Nature Recovery Award, and help support practical land management conservation tasks with our volunteer workforce. Here's just a snapshot of some of the inspiring projects we have supported to date...

Mayes Park

A radical transformation... before this work began, this land held no water and was a very dry site. We are honoured to have awarded Mayes Park funding through our Nature Recovery Award to break up and remove 1.3km of land drains that had been funneling water off the site. And just look at it now! You can clearly trace the path of the land drains, with stepping stone ponds now in its place, and soggy ground underfoot in the whole field. This was an almost instant transformation, immediately re-wetting the land and allowing Mayes Park to hold more water, slowing the flow of it leaving the land to help reduce flood risk downstream and create entirely new interlinking wetland habitats.

On the same site, we have also hosted volunteer work days to build leaky dams to further slow and control the flow of water across the site, planted Willow whips as a food source, and construction material to make the land more 'beaver ready' should beavers ever find their way to the site in the future, and even had a go at laying a hedge to create a fantastic wildlife corridor for small mammals and birds in particular. You can read all about the fascinating hedge laying process in our blog, and watch the story unfold in the video below.

Gaywood Farm (Pulborough)

Habitat restoration is a key part of the Wilder Horsham District project. At Gaywood Farm, an incredible story is just beginning to unfold in their 10-acre field, with our volunteers helping to plant 6,000 native tree saplings to transform the field into a wet woodland, one of the UK's most species-rich habitats. As the woodland grows and matures, it will connect existing woodland on one side of the site to the ancient woodland on the other border to create a vital wildlife corridor in a great example of habitat connectivity, a principle we try to encourage through the project.

Great Barn Farm (Wiston)

'Bomb Pond' -  Have a read of our blog to hear about the incredible (and very unexpected!) story of restoring a South Downs pond. As well as restoring the pond using our Nature Recovery Award funding, the farm is also planting up its margins and borders with scrub to restore undergrowth habitat, providing food, shelter and safe corridors for birds, small mammals and a whole host of other species. They also plan to restore their chalk stream, a real rarity. There are only about 200 chalk streams in the world, with most of them in the southern half of England. Their pure, clear, constant water from underground chalk aquifers and springs, flowing across flinty gravel beds, make them an ideal for lots of wild creatures to breed and thrive.