Imagine a wilder world on your doorstep, with more nature everywhere, for everyone, in urban and rural areas. Lily O'Neill visits The Howe to find out their plans to make it wilder for people and nature.

Overlooking the centre of Wheatley in Oxfordshire, The Howe is a patch of community land totalling 26 acres. The majority of this is grassland, grazed mostly by rare breeds of sheep, along with woodland copses, a small memorial tree area and bordered on two sides by a large allotment. 

I’ve got to know Maggie Fyffe, chair of charitable trust The Howe Trust, through BBOWT's ‘Reconnecting communities in the Bernwood, Otmoor & Ray’ project, which has just finished its current phase of activity. The project was a scoping study to draw out opportunities to improve the connectivity and resilience of habitats in this region bordering Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire and create more nature for people to benefit from.  

BBOWT has been leading this work in partnership with Wild Oxfordshire, funded by Natural England.

Our aim has been to highlight the importance of this region for wildlife and also, importantly, the value of working together at landscape scale to support the development of new projects and funding in the future. 

We wanted to deepen our engagement with community groups and get to know the people that live and work in this region who want to have a say in the projects we might develop here. We wanted to know how the local communities value this region, what it means to them, and what activities they were leading to improve spaces for wildlife. 

So, I made my way to Wheatley to walk around The Howe and talk with Maggie about her plans to boost nature on the site.  

The Howe

There is already some lovely wildlife to be seen. There are thickets of blackthorn on site, which provide habitat for hairstreak butterflies. We also saw ant hills formed by yellow ants, a great food source for woodpeckers. These ant hills were pointed out to Maggie when an ecologist from Wild Oxfordshire visited the site.  

With some further expert advice from Wild Oxfordshire, Maggie and The Howe Trust have begun developing these plans for The Howe: 

Restoring hedgerows 

Top of the list is restoring a 400m stretch of hedgerow, which she imagines will take three years under current projections. One hedgerow is in a very poor state so will need a serious restoration, which the Trust has already started on with the help of the Oxford Conservation Volunteers who have kindly agreed to come along and help lay the hedges. 

Improving the grassland 

The next project planned is creating a species-rich grassland. Animals currently graze the site and the aim is to reduce the intensity of this grazing in different ways to see if the patch can be turned into a species-rich grassland. There is a mild creeping thistle problem in the area, but Maggie is keen to avoid spraying with herbicide for environmental reasons and believes with proper grassland management this can be avoided. 

Creating a pond 

The final major project was to create a community pond on site. Maggie has since discovered that there used to be two large ponds at The Howe, which were filled in several decades ago and there are now plans to restore these rather than dig new ones. There is a school nearby and hopefully the students will be able to use the ponds as part of their learning.  

Space for people and wildlife 

During the pandemic, Maggie noticed that more people seemed to discover and use The Howe than before. She hopes this can be a space that families and the community will come and use, and in seeing this beautiful nature on their doorstep, may feel inspired to take some of those ideas home with them. 

The hope is also that the more people who know about this space, the better chance the Trust has of getting more volunteers to help at the site. Since they have such ambitious plans, the people-power to enact them is what Maggie feels they need. They are grateful to have the Oxford Conservation Volunteers on board, but it would be nice to have more local people invested in managing the space and gaining all the health and wellbeing benefits that come from nature too.

Coronation copse 

There have been recent tree-planting initiatives to celebrate the Coronation and help nature for future generations.  

Maggie said the aim is to create a 'Coronation Copse' in the bottom field at The Howe with species that are of particular value to wildlife - such as cherry plum, bird cherry, hazel, rowan, silver birch, crab apple, whitebeam and alder. 

How to get involved 

If you want to get involved, or see more of what The Howe Trust are doing, please see their Facebook page. 

Share your story of how you’re helping nature on your patch with us by emailing teamwilder@bbowt.org.uk