Our Beginnings
In the summer of 2021, a group of Kent farmers and landowners decided to work together for nature, and the Darent Valley Farmer Cluster was born.
United by an interest in environmentally positive farming methods and sustainability, our vision was to protect and restore the precious river, which flows through our landholdings, and its surrounding mosaic of habitats.
Facilitated by Kent Wildlife Trust, the group went on to be successful in our application for Landscape Recovery, one of Defra’s new Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs). One of just 22 first-round pilot projects of this type in England, the project’s focus is habitat and river restoration of the Darent – a globally rare chalk stream – and its catchment.
Farming in Protected Landscapes
Our project is located in Kent Downs National Landscape. Most of our group was managing areas of our farms for environmental benefit, as part of countryside stewardship and other schemes.
However, we were motivated to combine efforts to expand and increase connectivity of habitats, supporting species recovery and climate resilience at a landscape scale.
We wanted to understand the natural capital of our area and emerging sources of funding to deliver our aims.
Defra’s Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL) scheme provided funding to carry out a natural capital assessment with a nature-based approach.
This was key to identifying the scale of opportunity and ambition of our group, laying foundations for our Landscape Recovery project.
FiPL has continued to provide important funding for our group to carry out practical actions, such as our barn owl and environmental grazing projects.
Darent Valley Landscape Recovery
Darent Nature Partnership has been formed, as part of the 2-year development phase of the Darent Valley Landscape Recovery (DVLR) project, funded by Defra, which commenced in January 2023. This is to prepare our project for the 20+ year Implementation Phase from 2025, during which we will deliver large scale actions to achieve our project aims and outcomes.
Our project is under the River Restoration theme, with the Environment Agency (EA) as our delivery body. Therefore, the primary project focus is to improve the hydrology, ecology, biodiversity and water quality of the River Darent, a valuable chalk stream, which provides a connecting ribbon through the project area in the Upper and Mid-Darent catchments.
In the Upper Darent, the main land areas are strategically located upstream of high flood risk areas, such as Westerham and Chipstead, and along tributaries. This will enable implementation of key natural flood management interventions in this area. In the Middle Darent, where there is greatest land connectivity, the baseline nature-based solutions assessment that was carried out, identified the opportunity to create a network of species-rich grassland along the flood zone.
Creation and restoration of a kaleidoscope of floodplain and chalk grassland, wetland, woodland, and scrub habitat across the project area will result in considerable biodiversity gains, carbon sequestration, water retained in the landscape and other benefits.