Management Plan and Monitoring Record

It’s funny how sometimes you feel that all those years as a Landscape Architect, Garden Designer and then 5+ years of voluntary Neighbourhood Planning are leading to something, something more special, something that ‘appeals to your inner core’, if that’s not too corny.

This was the feeling when I put fingers to keyboard and wrote the words ‘Wilding The Outback: Management Plan and Monitoring Record’ at the top of a new word document.

This time the historical analysis, recording of vegetation, the actions, the layout of the 20 acres that make up the Outback was my project, and it will be doing something that is crucially important: increasing biodiversity and sequesting carbon back into the soil. Except for my husband and the land itself I do not have to bend to anyone else’s will. I can work to put true environmental value back into this corner of the UK, my contribution to climate change and biodiversity recovery. I hope to help others understand the ecological and economic value of our environment too.

For far too long we have treated the land, the air, the sea and flora and fauna within them as a free asset to be exploited. We are beginning to find out to the detriment of our health and finances that that was a huge mistake.

So, I write my plan. It will say what I am going to do each year to enable the successful wilding process. It will be an evolving and continuous plan, from which I hope to learn. I will include baseline surveys and the results of soil analysis for carbon content. In addition, how I hope to communicate these findings to others and how to make it finically viable. If we cannot understand the economic value of and pay for the protection and restoration of our world then we are in trouble.

I am excited and hopeful.