Getting more from our land with the Oxford Green Estate
Dr Nick Leimu-Brown, Chair of the Oxford Green Estate Stewards and Principal of Linacre College, shares the vision behind the Oxford Green Estate project
Images from Wytham Woods
The Oxford Green Estate project aims to enhance the University’s green spaces – providing greater accessibility to all, and making them more wildlife-friendly and better suited for research and teaching. Read more about it in this Q&A with Dr Nick Leimu-Brown.
What is the Oxford Green Estate (OGE)?
It’s a major new initiative that brings together 23 of our green spaces around Oxford under a consistent long-term vision. It will mean our land is better managed, more biodiverse and will strengthen its role in supporting teaching, research and public engagement.
Initially we are focusing on just a few locations. As well as continuing to run Wytham Woods, the OGE team in Estates Services has taken responsibility for Park Farm along the banks of the Cherwell, Northfield Farm at Wytham and the woodland at Court Place Gardens. You can already see positive changes happening at all three, including pond restoration to enhance biodiversity at Park Farm and the installation of five Chronolog posts at Park Farm to create a historical record over years and decades.
Why do we need to make better use of our land for research, and how will this help the researchers themselves?
The environment is changing quickly, and there’s still a huge amount we don’t understand about how ecosystems are responding and how this will affect us.
To understand the challenges we face – from coping with rising flood risk to the continuing challenge of feeding billions of people despite the changing climate – there’s no substitute for long-term monitoring in the field. That in turn depends on a suitable study site that is managed consistently over time. At Oxford, we are uniquely placed to provide this, and indeed we’ve been doing it for decades at Wytham Woods, making it one of the world’s most studied ecosystems and enabling our scientists to produce remarkable long-term datasets.
For researchers, there are great opportunities to work in a wide variety of habitat types that are carefully managed over the long term with their needs in mind. They can also draw on the OGE team’s expertise for help choosing a suitable site and setting up their experiment.
Why are we doing this?
Until now, these green spaces have been managed piecemeal, so they haven’t always done as much good as they could have – whether in academic, conservation or wellbeing terms.
Some of our stewardship has been outstanding – expert management of Wytham Woods has helped make them not just a rich patchwork of valuable wildlife habitats and a beloved place for local people to connect with nature, but also one of the world’s greatest outdoor laboratories. Other sites have received much less attention and academic use, something we’re determined to change. Sharing resources, equipment and expertise across all the sites will also bring financial benefits, letting us maintain them more efficiently and get more benefit from what we invest.
How will OGE help reach net zero and create a positive impact on biodiversity by 2035?
Many of these green spaces haven’t been managed with wildlife as a priority, and there are plenty of opportunities for improvement that we’re now taking – often with funding from our Environmental Sustainability colleagues.
For instance, the riverside meadows at Park Farm are a rare, precious ecosystem, but they need to be grazed to maintain biodiversity and stop rough grass and rushes taking over. This essential management has been missing for years. After taking over management of the site from the tenant farmer, we’ve been working to repair and improve the fencing so we can bring cattle back to the meadows without also unintentionally introducing them to the streets of Marston. The team have also restored a degraded pond ecosystem by dredging many years’ worth of leaf litter and cutting back overgrown trees, as well as creating a management plan to increase numbers of the rare brown hairstreak butterfly.
Some of our management changes may also have a positive effect on how much carbon the land absorbs, but the main benefit in carbon reduction terms is likely to come from the research our scientists do in these green spaces. This will give us a better understanding of how carbon moves through different ecosystems – an essential part of understanding and coping with climate change.
Wytham Woods
How can staff get involved?
We want to make more of our land accessible to everyone, and there are already wonderful opportunities for staff, students and the public to get out and enjoy the mental and physical health benefits that experiencing nature can bring.
Everyone is welcome to apply for a free visitor permit for Wytham Woods – 1,000 acres of beautiful ancient seminatural woodland just outside the ring road. Closer to town, the riverside meadows at Park Farm are a short stroll away – a hidden gem between Marston and central Oxford.
We’ll be collaborating with more schools, charities and other organisations to make greater use of our sites in education and public engagement.
It’s early days, but we're excited about the new possibilities that OGE creates. Watch this space for updates on the improvements we’re making and our progress towards a more diverse, productive green estate that does more to benefit not just the University, but everyone in the area.
The Green Estate team would be delighted to hear ideas for research, teaching or outreach on the green estate. You can contact us on oge@admin.ox.ac.uk.
