The little archaic grassland is unimproved and a Site of Nature Conservation Interest (SCNI), but the parts nearest the church are mown too often and the southern extension are in poor condition.

It is worth recording that at least one part of the SNCI (TQ380 189), a relict wet meadow, just north west of The Hooke has been destroyed only recently (2017).

The farm's fields are the centre of a series of wet woods, damp meadows and carr that extend east to Godleys Green (TQ 371 198).

In late spring the cotton grass and marsh cinquefoil covers many square metres of quaking bog amongst the carr.

In Spring the perfume of water mint is widespread and you can find angelica, marsh pennywort, purple moor grass tussocks, sharp-flowered rush, black sedge and bog stitchwort.

In late May, a southern meadow has swarms of meadow/marsh plume thistle with soft shaving brush carmine flowers on white-woolly stems, and there's ladys smock, spotted orchids, creeping willow and rare spring sedge.

The rushy meadows have water horsetail, sneezewort and clumps of narrow buckler fern in the shadier places.

The woodland rides are the last redoubt for these old grassland species, but straw laid for the Pheasants in several of these woods can only harm that relict vegetation.

Although new, just inside the wood, where the footpaths fork east of the farmhouse, is an ancient hornbeam dubbed 'The Octopus' (TQ 384 181), its many tendril-like branches writhing and wrapping around each other.

At the north end of the wood, east of the footpath is a veteran beech with '1945 Audrey and Bill' carved on the bole next to two hearts pierced with an arrow.

The name means 'bourne path' (werpel) and perhaps referred to the partly lost track from Wapsbourne Gate and Farm westwards to the defunct Hunt's Gate crossroads, still marked by a huge veteran oak pollard, (TQ 391 234), hidden in the hedge where the footpath turns off from Butterbox Lane.

In the Middle Ages the Sussex Weald was a land of big commons, hunting chases and parks and it was only in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that the majority were eradicated.

It still has some rides and glades that maintain a heathy character and since new management by the Sussex Wildlife Trust, seventeen of the rare marsh gentian have been seen there.

[6] You may see white park cattle, ponies, or heath sheep out on the common for conservation, maintaining the natural equilibrium of species through grazing.

Fifty years ago Garth Christian saved the marsh gentian and they can still be seen there today with their trumpets full of tiny stars.

In recent surveys, too, special wetland plants have been refound like bog pondweed, marsh pennywort, ragged robin and wild hops, as well as dormice, adder, grass snake, and great crested and palmate newts.

There is open bracken down the slope to the north, while the southern high ground of the Common is pitted and rumpled and borders Starvecrow wood.

Going north towards the Lambourn Gill (Longford Stream), the acidic Hastings Beds, with their sands, hard sandrocks and clays, begin.

As the ground rises towards Chailey North Common, the Wealden Clay gives way to Tunbridge Wells Sand and the woods subtly change, becoming drier and more acidic.

Sawpit Wood is on a hill to the north of Hurst Barns and has wild daffodils, scented sweet violets and bluebells.

Starvecrow Wood (TQ 398 176), on the pit's eastern side and south of Markstakes Common, is an open woodland with humps and hollows everywhere, with some old knotty hornbeam.

Rabbit Wood (TQ 389 186), is a classic Chailey woodland with tall straight oak, birch, hornbeam and Bluebell floor, with lovely glades.

The Lambourn Gill (Longford Stream) divides it from Eels Ash Wood (TQ385 193) which suffered badly from the 1998 storm and has since needed a lot of coppicing and clearance work.

The blackthorn hedges can provide such a large harvest of sloes in Autumn they emit a purple haze and the branches bend low under the weight of the berries.

[4] On the south west parish border is Great Home Wood (TQ 372 182), a big abundant hornbeam coppice.

It was part of an important desmesne 300-acre wood of the Priory of St Pancras at Lewes, but it was lost to the church, its commoners dispossessed and its woodland part-cleared and converted to farmland before 1650.

Wapsbourne Wood (TQ 395 238) has hornbeam and sweet chestnut coppice with little Bracken glades, banks and dells, and flushes of Bluebells.

Mayflies, giant lacewing, beautiful demoiselles, and large red damselflies play in every sunny spot along the stream.

There are some nice corners of rough tall herbage survive along the banks of the stream which passes many of the woods in the centre of the parish.

The ward also includes Ditchling, East Chiltington, Newick, Plumpton, St John Without, Streat, Westmeston and Wivelsfield.