Watercress Farm

Watercress Farm is one of Belmont’s nature recovery and connection projects just outside Bristol. The rewilding project aims to restore an environmentally degraded landscape to benefit nature, climate and community. The land has been conventionally farmed, drained and constrained by human intervention, contributing to an alarming drop in local biodiversity, high concentrations of agrochemicals in the soils and watercourses, and an increased risk of downstream flooding. 

Belmont has been rewilding and rewetting the landscape, enabling the land to act as a functioning floodplain while restoring natural water flow and creating a haven for birds, pollinators, and plants. The site is also home to Belmont’s nature connection and community programmes, enabling thousands of children, adults, and families to access green space for free, reap the mental and physical benefits, and deepen connections with nature. 

Kick-starting natural processes

Since the project began in 2020, the site has seen the recreation and reemergence of complex habitats and diverse ecological communities. Key to the site’s rewilding are free-roaming herbivores, including Red Ruby cattle and Dartmoor Ponies, which have different grazing and browsing behaviours, and Tamworth Pigs, which can break up the grassroots and open up the soil to allow flowering plants to establish. 

In 2023, the next phase of restoration was initiated by creating a complex wetland. The project reconnected the Land Yeo to its former floodplain, restoring critical hydrological processes and creating a new, more sinuous river channel, ponds and seasonally wet scrapes. It is designed to filter and slow rainwater runoff, helping reduce downstream flooding, limit pollutants and excess nutrients entering the river, and transform an environmentally degraded landscape into a biodiverse wetland, supporting abundant wildlife.

You can watch the rewetting process here 

Nature Based Enterprises

The site generates revenue by selling ecosystem services (natural capital), such as high-quality Biodiversity Net Gain. 

Watercress Farm benefits from public footpaths, allowing the local community to visit and experience it. The site is also the growing home for Belmont’s nature connection, events and community volunteering programmes, with thousands of people from schools, families, charities and businesses accessing nature each year.