Three years of painstaking work by BBOWT is beginning to bear fruit at its major 200-hectare site at Chimney Meadows alongside the River Thames, writes HELEN PEACOCKE

The appearance of cowslips on Chimney Meadow this spring, followed by pepper saxifrage, yellow rattle, black knapweed and quaking grass, indicates that all the hard work that has gone into turning back arable fields into meadows full of flora has paid off.

The fact that Chimney Meadows recently achieved second place in the Grassland category of the Go Native! Planting for Biodiversity awards confirms this.

Chimney Meadows is a 200-hectare parcel of farmland made up for six fields on the River Thames near Bampton, which was acquired by Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust in 2003.

Thanks to a highly successful public appeal, which raised more than £243,000 and pledges of £1.1m from national and local charitable trusts, the future of this land is assured.

Chimney Meadows has the added attraction of abutting a 50-hectare national nature reserve which the trust manages on behalf of its owner English Nature. This has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and is representative of two highly threatened habitat types within Britain and Europe: flood plain meadows of which only 1,300 hectares remain and dry neutral grass land of which 5,000 to 10,000 hectars remain.

The site is managed by project officer Dr Kerry Lock, who is absolutely thrilled with the number of wild flowers and grasses that have come up this year. She is particularly delighted to discover quaking grass growing among the wild flowers.

Quaking grass, so called because its pods actually quake in the wind, is a slow-growing wintergreen grass largely restricted to unfertilised, often grasslands rich in species, and is usually abundant in old meadows. Dr Lock says that to find it establishing itself at Chimney Meadows so rapidly is a very positive sign.

Turning arable land into meadows so quickly was thanks largely to the green hay which was cut from the nature reserve and then spread over the fields which had been prepared the previous year.

The benefits of using local eco-types, those which have maintained their identity in a location, when trying to re-create grasslands rich in species is obvious. Nevertheless Dr Lock did leave a small 30m by 30m area in each of the fields unplanted to enable her to compare and contrast the development of the meadows with what had been there previously.

The contrast couldn't be more marked. The squares contain none of the bio-diversity that the rest of the land now boasts. Thistles, poppies and rough grasses are virtually the only plants that thrive in these patches.

Dr Lock is also monitoring the health of the site by measuring the development of the amphibian population, as well as spiders, insects, moths and beetles. These are collected in several ways.

Yellow pans are put out for 24 hours to collect invertebrates attracted to this bright colour and cups are placed in the ground to trap ground spiders. The more insects she collects the more confirmation she has that the effect that management policies adopted at Chimney Meadows are on the right track.

Now that the meadows are established, Dr Lock and her team are preparing to work on the wet grassland areas, cutting holes in the side of the Thames Path to enable the water to tip into the ditches when the river rises.

This doesn't mean that the land will be turned into a big lake, but it's certainly hoped that soggy moist patches will develop which will attract wading birds such as the curlew, with its long downward curved bills and long legs which relies on water meadows and moist pastures to survive. Earlier in the year, Dr Lock enjoyed the first sighting of a redshank on this land in six years. She also observed two grass snakes swimming side by side in the stream. Later she discovered grass snake summer skins discarded besides a stack of hay, another positive sign, though she has yet to see any adders.

"That's not to say they are not here, just that it's such a large piece of land I haven't seen them," said Dr Lock, who is organising several different surveys to monitor Chimney Meadows. She says it's not enough to rely on anecdotal evidence.

"The Ashmolean Botanical Group is helping with the botanical survey, and we have experts working on bird surveys and others on butterflies and moths. We even plan a worm density survey, because when it comes to checking the health of the soil the density of worms is an excellent indicator," she explained, adding that this was all in keeping with her move towards collecting quantitative evidence.

"People have been aware of the difference that can be made and have acknowledged it by saying the meadows look good, but now hard core data is needed so that the results can be measured and shared," she said.

Although the site is not yet fully open to the public, work is progressing on building a car park, bird hides and walk boards which will provide wheelchair users access to the hides.

For those who would like to visit Chimney Meadows, Dr Lock is running a number of guided walks during the summer. You can contact her on 01865 775476.