Working Together for Wildlife: Wiston Estate wins the Schöffel Farm-Environment Partnership Award

Guest blog by Penny Green, Wiston Estate Ecologist

There’s something incredibly powerful about collaboration — about people, organisations, and landscapes coming together for a shared purpose. Here at Wiston Estate, we’ve long believed that nature recovery isn’t something that can happen in isolation. It’s a team effort, a shared journey between farmers, conservationists, and the local community.

So, it’s with enormous joy that we share the news that Wiston Estate has been awarded the Schöffel Farm-Environment Partnership Award. This category recognises farms that have formed successful partnerships with others, showcasing the positive outcomes that can flow from collaboration.

Partnership at the Heart of the Estate 

For years we’ve worked closely with Sussex Wildlife Trust (SWT), providing the operating base for their conservation grazing livestock. Their animals are traditional breeds including Romney and Herdwick sheep and Sussex Cattle, which play a crucial role in restoring and maintaining some of Sussex’s most precious habitats - including wildflower-rich chalk grasslands on the South Downs, wood pastures in the Weald and heathlands on the Greensand.

We also benefit from their careful grazing here at Wiston. Important downland sites like Washington Chalk Pits, which is a designated Local Wildlife Site, are thriving thanks to this partnership. This steep chalk grassland is home to rare species such as the delicate Musk Orchid and the Duke of Burgundy butterfly, one of Britain’s rarest and most charismatic butterflies. “The Duke” saw huge declines and almost disappeared from the county but thanks to sensitive management it has made an astonishing come-back. Washington Chalk Pits is becoming a vital stepping stone in a wider recovery project stretching across the South Downs. A late summer graze by the Sussex Cattle helps spread Cowslip seeds in their dung which is vital work as the Cowslip is “the Duke’s” larval foodplant.

Connecting Landscapes, Connecting People 

We’re proud to be a founder member of the Weald to Waves nature recovery corridor: a 100-mile vision that reconnects fragmented habitats across Sussex, from the High Weald to the coast at Climping Gap. We have committed to creating more connecting habitat including new species-rich meadows and wetlands, and planting hedgerows; these measures will help attract more wildlife and provide ecosystem services such as alleviating flooding, improving soil structure and providing nectar source for pollinators.

Alongside this, we’re also an active member of the Arun to Adur Farmers Group, a cluster of like-minded land managers working together to deliver landscape-scale conservation, share knowledge, and support one another.

Community at the Core: The Steyning Downland Scheme 

One of the projects closest to our hearts is the Steyning Downland Scheme, a wonderful collaboration between Wiston Estate and the local community.

This partnership has brought young people, families, dog walkers, and volunteers into closer connection with the land they live beside. It’s home to a variety of important habitats including chalk grassland, wet woodland and a chalk stream, and hosts some very special wildlife and is home to one of the UK’s strongest populations of the Brown Hairstreak butterfly.

A Landscape of Abundance

Across the farmed parts of the estate, you can see the results of decades of careful management and monitoring. Miles of beetle banks, conservation headlands, and wild bird seed mixes wind through the arable fields, providing habitat for insects and farmland birds and providing space for nature alongside growing food.

Wiston has contributed to one of the most remarkable and enduring scientific studies in the country — the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Sussex Study. Started by the legendary ecologist Dick Potts, this long-term project tracks the impacts of changes in farming on arable biodiversity. By taking part in this research, Wiston has helped to deepen understanding of how farming practices affect wildlife.

The data, collected over decades, continues to shape national conservation policy and guide how land is managed today. It’s a reminder that every beetle bank and wildflower margin contributes to something much bigger on a landscape scale.

Sustainability from Soil to Glass 

Wiston’s vineyards, too, are part of this story. They have been accredited under the Sustainable Wines of Great Britain scheme — a mark of their commitment to environmental best practice.

From creating compost on site to reducing soil disturbance, and from planting cover crops for pollinators to minimising pesticide and fertiliser use, the vineyards are providing space for wildlife as well as growing award-winning wine. In the winter months a flock of SWT sheep graze between the vines completing the cycle of nutrients eaten, digested, dropped, degraded and allowed back to the vines.

Passion and Vision

Behind it all are Richard and Kirsty Goring and their family, whose love of place guides everything that happens on the estate. Their approach is rooted in the belief that people and nature are part of the same story, that we all share responsibility for caring for the land, and that farming can be a force for good.

Richard often speaks of stewardship rather than ownership, and a connectedness with nature - this ethos has filtered down through the Wiston Estate team. We didn’t make the land but are made from it, and our role is to leave it richer and more resilient than we found it.

Why Collaboration Matters

Winning this award isn’t just a celebration of Wiston - it’s recognition of everyone involved: the Sussex Wildlife Trust grazing team, the farmers in the Arun to Adur group, the team and volunteers at Steyning Downland Scheme, the South Downs National Park Authority, the estate team, and the volunteers who help us. Together we can pool resources, share ideas and do even more good for nature on a much larger scale.

Partnerships like these are how we build resilience into our landscapes, how we share knowledge, and how we bring communities closer to the natural world around them.

The challenges facing our countryside are huge - from climate change to biodiversity loss - but hope lies in working together, and that collaboration is a necessity. At Wiston, we’ll keep nurturing these partnerships, because by joining forces we can do our best to provide a landscape that is good for food production, people, and wildlife.

Being awarded the Schöffel Farm-Environment Partnership Award is an honour but more than that, it’s a moment to reflect on what can happen when we choose collaboration and connectivity. We continue to learn and have by no means got to our destination yet, there's a lot further to go on this adventure.