This delightful and secluded area, comprising flood meadows, hedges and reed-filled ditches next to the Little Ouse river in the parish of Garboldisham, at the western end of the LOHP project area, was purchased by LOHP in 2010. We called the 5.7ha site Scarfe Meadows in memory of David Scarfe, its late owner. The purchase was funded by donors to the LOHP's River Link Appeal and donations from LOHP members. Restoration of the site is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

LOHP is maintaining the traditional cattle grazing management regime on the meadows, managing the grazing pressure to create a grassland structure that will encourage breeding waders such as Lapwing, Snipe and Redshank. New field gates have been installed and the barbed wire fences will be replaced by high quality stock fencing later this year. Although the meadows have not received fertiliser inputs for many years, the grassland has been agriculturally improved through past re-seeding and applications of broad-leaved herbicides. As a result it has lost many of its wildflower species; restoration of flower-rich grassland is an exciting, but more long-term objective for this site.

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The ditches, with transitional fen habitat at their margins, have huge potential for wildlife. In the past they have been fenced off from the fields but, to provide a gradation from wet grassland to open water, and to improve the landscape quality of the marsh, the fences are being progressively removed. At the same time, the aquatic habitats are being improved and maintained through rotational slubbing-out and re-profiling of the ditches.

The old hedges bordering the meadows provide shelter and nest sites for many songbirds, including Linnets, Yellowhammer and Whitethroat. However, they too are in need of restoration management. Many of the hedgerow shrubs are overgrown and there are gaps in the rows, so the hedges no longer provide the dense cover needed to shelter nesting birds and many species of invertebrates. Our management will ensure a return to a dense structure but reduce the height of the hedges so that they do not deter nesting waders by providing look-out posts for Carrion Crows, which are a major nest predator.