Churchtown Farm

Churchtown Farm is a community nature reserve one mile south of Saltash, Cornwall, England.

It is leased from Antony Estate and managed by Cornwall Wildlife Trust, and includes diverse habitats such as grassland, estuarine mudflats, wetland, woodland, disused quarries and hedgerows.

From the 1960s, most of the fields were intensively managed, being re-seeded with highly productive rye grass mixtures maintained by regular applications of chemical fertilisers and heavy grazing.

This intensive management has artificially increased the soil nutrients and encouraged pastures with a very limited range of plant species and little structural variation.

In an attempt to encourage wildlife back to the farm, Cornwall Wildlife Trust are using a number of less intensive management techniques aimed at reducing the soil nutrient levels and increasing the number of plant species.