Natural flood management Norbury Park Farm

In collaboration with SCC Flood and Resilience team Norbury Park Farm have created a scrape/ ephemeral pond to capture run off from an arable field, create new habitat, reduce erosion down a PRoW and prevent flooding a neighbour’s property. The field will also be secured by gates and fencing to prevent people from trespassing off of the PRoW.  

The farm uses the field for maize to produce cattle feed and already plants a cover crop over winter as well as planting across the gradient of the field to try and mitigate run off. A corner of the field was identified and surveyed by the Surrey Wildlife Trust Ecology team as an ideal location to create the scrape and will hold a large volume of water in winter and will dry out in summer.  

Temporary ponds persist in semi-natural habitats such as grassland and heathland, but the feature can also be extremely valuable for wildlife in arable fields too. A huge variety of wildlife uses temporary ponds and they often support rare and scarce species which thrive in the unique combination of periodic flooding and drying. Many scarce plants and insects are associated with the damp muddy margins exposed as temporary ponds dry out.( Temporary ponds and scrapes – Farm Wildlife)