ATTENDEES PLEASE READ OUR RISK ASSESSMENT!

 

Come and help us extend our local hedge network as part of our ambitious 'Hedge in Time' project. This time we will be in the ancient Swinford Meadows across the river from Long Mead.

 

This NRN project began in 2020 in the Witney Road playground during Covid, since then NRN members have planted nearly three kilometres of hedgerow in eight schools and on community land in villages in and around Eynsham. The idea, inspired by Freeland farmer Robert Crocker, is to connect up our villages, rivers and meadows by hedgerow!

The whips that we all planted last year now flourishing, and so we are planning to plant even more this year, on the 60 acres of land that we have leased for us all to restore adjacent to the River Thames.
 
 See the map on the right of this page, under 'Location'

Swinford Meadows have been leased to us by the Oxford Preservation Trustus for our community to restore as a mosaic of habitats - meadows, hedgerows, wetland and woodlands. We are delighted to be starting a new collaboration with them, working together to restore this rare habitat on our doorstep, for wildlife and people. 

It is always helpful if you can arrive at the beginning so that we can brief everyone together. But if you can’t make it then, we’d love to see you anyway. We will leave from Long Mead at 10.00, follow the white dots to the lock (see map below) and then up the towpath on the Swinford side to the meadow. The QR codes take you to Google Maps with directions.
 
There will be cake but please bring a thermos and a picnic lunch, spades, secateurs and gloves if you have them. We can provide them if you don't. And wellies - it is likely to be wet. 

Huge thanks to our formidable Wednesday Team without whose preparation we wouldn't be here. 

Thanks also to all our community organisations for coming together to make 'our whole greater than the sum of our parts' and to our partners in the wider landscape - the Oxford Conservation Volunteers, as well as to the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and Wild Oxfordshire for funding the all-important the hedging plants.