Rose Dale

Rose first qualified and worked as a commercial barrister before working as a garden designer for 20 years. She now runs the family farm in Buckinghamshire which is farmed on organic principles with a long term view to providing high quality food for local people and opportunities for people to visit and benefit from the natural environment whilst having a zero, or even negative, farm carbon footprint and increasing the biodiversity on the farm.

Rose has recently purchased three small flocks of pedigree sheep to run alongside her longhorn cattle and has put much of the farm to pasture. A large orchard has also been planted using many old varieties. The farm is bounded by the River Thame, one of the tributaries of the Thames, and lies in part in the flood plain. Rose is working with local conservation groups and hopes to create a series of wetlands on the farm over the coming years. She is also keen to set up a cluster group of farmers to carry out conservation work along the valley of the River Thame. Scrapes for wetland birds have been created and latest work includes scarifying and seeding with green hay from local nature reserves certain of the existing river meadows in an attempt to increase the range of flora.