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The East Kent Downs Landscape Recovery Project is a Natural England led initiative and the culmination of over 25 years of working  with farmers on habitat creation and nature recovery projects in the farmed landscapes of east kent.  Using agri environment schemes as the main tool and building long term relationships with over 95 farms, the project has pioneered a novel approach to the way that the schemes are delivered.   The project's key ambition has been to work, farm by farm,  creating species-rich grasslands from arable land and grass-dominated pastures. 

 

Wildflower diversity is achieved through a combination of natural regeneration, native provenance wildflower seeding and green hay spreading with the overall ambition of achieving a new generation of floristically and structurally diverse grasslands.  Restoring insect and seed-rich landscapes in this way delivers a sustainable long term and resilient resource of grasslands that drives species recovery across a broad range of taxa, in addition to all the  attendant benefits to soil health, water quality and carbon capture. ​An annual rolling programme of new wildflower grassland creation is undertaken each year to ensure that there is a continual succession of new grasslands being created which helps to continually expand the network year by year.  Supplementing this with a wider patchwork of the nature friendly farming measures such as grassy margins, bee and bird food plots, regenerative farming practices, and woodland management ensures that nature and food production can go hand in hand. 

 

The project is organised into three 'farmer groups' each comprising 30 or more farms who come together to share knowledge, learn and celebrate their successes.  Critical to the central 'wildflower-grassland' focus of the project is a close 1-1 working relationship between each farm and a Natural England adviser so that, together, the combined commitment of each farm is able to deliver a well connected network of 'high nature value' habitats  across the landscape of the East Kent Downs.