‘Enormously exciting’: farm to create biggest natural grassland in southern England

The Restore team on the estate. From left: Nicola Wingfield, Inigo Weston, Matt Collis, Benedict Macdonald and Ross Wingfield. Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

The rolling hills south of Salisbury Plain are a bleak scene of vast arable fields and tightly grazed pasture dotted with scores of sheep.

In recent decades, Lower Pertwood farm has embraced organic growing, producing oats, barley and other crops, while boosting numbers of rare corn buntings and other wildlife with wildflower banks and newly planted trees.