The Tong Farm Restoration Project

Project Summary

The work includes:

• 10 benches will be installed across the farm to allow you to sit awhile and enjoy this piece of countryside that we all cherish.
• A total of 16,000 trees will be planted to vastly improve the field edge habitat and provide nectar and food for invertebrates, birds and small mammals.
• 9600 trees will make up 1.5 kilometres of mixed native hedgerows and a further 5000 trees planted in enclosures.
• A final 100 trees will be planted across the farm to create more of an open wood pasture habitat, whilst retaining key viewpoints across the landscape. As these trees mature, they will provide a home for wildlife as well as shade for livestock.
• Installing and planting fenced enclosures with dense scrubby tree species in the lower fields to increase species diversity and provide valuable habitat for scrub-reliant species.
• Flushers Pond will be drained early in January so it can be mechanically desilted. An appropriate outflow system will also be installed to allow the duck weed to be skimmed off and a filtration pond dug out, before being refilled in time for the amphibians to return in early spring.
• Replacing 8 kilometres of dilapidated stock fencing and installing water troughs in all fields to allow us to graze all farm fields.
• The sections of the brook that runs through the farm fields will see considerable reprofiling of its banks to slow the flow of water and create marginal wetland areas along the lower fields.

The livestock will be taken off-site prior to works commencing and will return once fields are fenced.