Sarah’s Meadow is a newly formed green space in Milton under Wychwood within the Cotswolds National Landscape. Once rough grazing land, Sarah’s Meadow is today managed as a Local Green Space and maintained for ecological conservation and increased biodiversity for the benefit of wildlife and for the community to enjoy. The site was named Sarah’s Meadow in honour of Sarah Olney, from Natural England, whose vision first shaped the project. The four ponds and worm bench were funded and constructed by the Evenlode Catchment Partnership under the guidance of Wild Oxfordshire. We spoke to volunteer Elaine Brittan, whose work has helped shape the space into what it is today.
How Sarah’s Meadow began
“After the Neighbourhood Plan was ‘made’ in 2023, the parish was given this piece of land. So then, of course, we had to say, well, what do we do with it?
And that was the start of it because we then worked with the experts at Wild Oxfordshire, without whom we couldn't have done this. With the help of Community Ecologist, Imogen Parker, and Jacqui Hide, who was on secondment with Wild Oxfordshire during the summer of 2025, a botanical survey was completed, and a map and plan of the meadow was created. In the Neighbourhood Plan, we designated a number of Local Green Spaces and Blue-Green Corridors along the streams. Local Green Spaces have legal weight and generally can’t be built on. But during the course of identifying these spaces, it became clear to me that we needed to do something a bit more than just designate some areas on a map. So, a community action group was born – Milton Biodiversity Monitoring and Action Group (BMAG). We worked closely with the Parish Council especially Councillors Pat Ward and Graham Smith.
Practical work on the Meadow
“We've done various things on Sarah's Meadow. We cleared rubbish out of the stream and cut back the growth. We’ve built hibernacula, planted trees and wildflowers. We’ve improved the access path across Sarah's Meadow; we’ve put a fence around two of the most important ponds with Trust for Oxfordshire’s Environment’s (TOE) funding. Then we built a dead hedge on the inside of the fence using the brush from the stream clearance. And we know it's working! This spring we did a “dip” in the stream and two of the ponds. It was amazing! I was absolutely stunned at the amount of water life - and in just two years - hundreds of wriggling, darting creatures as well as the toads, frogs and newts which we already knew were there. And many new plants! Behind all this has been Imogen Parker’s excellent Management Plan which is guiding us step by step.
We're very happy that Sarah’s Meadow is protected for nature, but we do also see a lot of people at the Meadow; it’s used by walkers, joggers, dog walkers, all sorts of people. It’s a balancing act – it’s acommunity amenity as well as a conservation area, and an important one. Apart from the village green, it's the biggest open space we have.
We’ve also been experimenting with wildflowers, and of course they can struggle a bit in competition, but so far, they're holding their own, and we're working on creating another patch, and another patch!
We’ve now put up two big signs, with Wild Oxfordshire’s help, including the habitatsmap that Imogen produced with some of the creatures and plants to show what sortof wildlife is there.
Sarah’s Meadow is a big project, but we have done other things like planting 6,500 young trees as part of Wild Oxfordshire’s Hedgerow Heroes Project. Super support from Hedgerows and Partnerships Project Officer, Jessica Bouwer - Wild Oxfordshire have been so helpful and supportive! We created community orchards using the Prince of Wales’s Coronation Living Heritage fund - one just on the edge of a new housing estate, which is good because the community has more access to nature through their orchard. The residents are adopting trees to look after them.”
Personal impact
“For me, it goes back to my childhood. I was brought up in the middle of the industrial Black Country with hardly a flower in sight apart from our garden. And birds, hardly one in sight apart from on the allotments. It’s an interest that's always been there but has been a bit dormant with family life and mostly living in inner cities. So, for me, it’s been massively important; it's made my life richer and fuller. And it’s good for me, physically and mentally. I think I can now identify the 20 most common butterflies because of doing last year's Big Butterfly Count. You keep on learning! It also gives you a purpose; retirement for me has become more meaningful. And it’s a truly vital purpose! I think you could say I've become more passionate about nature; the more I’ve done, the more passionate I've become!”
Community impact and challenges
“The downsides have been the amount of time it's taken to get people actually doing something, not just talking, and to keep them motivated. There are around 170 people on our mailing list, and we are trying very hard to involve young people, but our approach to one of the secondary schools has been very disappointing, frankly. But now, starting with a core of people, who are the sons and daughters of a lot of us in the older group, children in the primary school, plus the scouts and anyone else we can recruit, we're starting to get a core of young people.
And the rewards are coming now, and that's important because there's been a lot of slog, a lot of admin, a lot of sitting at the computer. The water life in the ponds, birds we have never seen before; birds that haven'tbeen seen in the locality for 40 years.”
Final thoughts
“Everybody must do their bit. For me, it's made me much more aware of the connectedness of everything, climate change, sustainability, biodiversity…. these are all much more important to me now”
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