Foxbury

Foxbury is our groundbreaking heathland restoration project: a 150 hectare site of dry and wet heathland, ponds and woodland, already colonised by many rare heathland wildlife specialists. This is a fragile conservation site with no regular public access except for educational groups (by prior arrangement).

Acquired in 2005 through Grantscape funding, the site is gradually being restored to its natural state of lowland heathland and native broad-leafed woodland habitats, after years as a commercial conifer plantation.

It's coloured by yellow flowering gorse, purple heathers, flourishing orchids and foxgloves, blossoming trees in their infancy, and braided with miles of gravel trackways. Belted Galloway cattle and New Forest ponies lazily graze underneath newly exposed English oaks. On warm summer evenings the ‘churrs’ of many secretive nightjars combine to create a captivating soundscape. While silhouettes of bats dart overhead, deer melt into the cover of woodland and the green cosmic light of glow worms pepper the tracksides.

The site is also part of a Heritage Lottery Fund project called ‘Our Past, Our Future’, which funded tree planting and helped to build new infrastructure within Foxbury that facilitates educational activities.