The Farm

Salt Marshes

A combination of a massive tidal range ( the second biggest in the world at over 14 M) and the erosive power of the Severn bore help to create a very special kind of saltmarsh in the upper reaches of the Severn Estuary known as Atlantic Salt Pasture.

History

This natural short grassy habitat is the ancestral home for many of the grazing species of wildfowl that are associated with the Severn Estuary especially the Bewick’s Swan, European White Fronted Goose and Wigeon. Along with other species like Common Crane, Red Deer and the Auroch (the wild ancestor of our domestic cattle) it provided a rich hunting landscape for our hunter gatherer ancestors dating back over 5000 years. This land was even more valuable to the first farmers providing them as it still does today with a valuable fattening area for domestic stock and leading to the construction of the sea walls to prevent the worst of the flooding, creating what we know today as the New Grounds.

Atlantic Salt Pasture

This rare habitat is restricted to just a few examples scattered along the western Seaboard of Europe from Brittany ( Mont-Saint-Michel ) in the south through the Channel Islands parts of western Ireland to the Solway in Scotland. The species composition varies from site to site but is generally dominated by Common Saltmarsh Grass Puccinellia maritima and Sea milkwort Glaux maritima. Other species on the New Grounds include a flush of the white flowered Common Scurvy Grass Cochlearia officinalis in the spring the diminutive pink flower of Greater Sea Spurry Spergularia media and a spectacular show of Sea Aster Aster tripolium in the autumn. All provide a succulent slightly salty grazing pasture favoured above all other pastures by our domestic stock.

Management

This grazing is vitally important in the management of this habitat without it coarser grasses will dominate and a valuable feeding area for thousands of wintering water fowl would be lost.