In the UK, the concept of care farming is relatively new although there is an increasing amount of interest from many sectors including farmers, health care professionals and social care providers, the prison and probation services. An initial scoping study of the range and number of current care farming initiatives currently operating in the UK was conducted and 76 care farms returned questionnaires to the University of Essex. The survey includes 19 city farms, 16 independent farms and 41 farms linked to external institutions or charities. The size of care farms varies between 0.3 ha to 650 ha and the majority of care farms all have a mix of field enterprises and livestock. In terms of organisational structure, a third of care farms in the study are farms, 29% are a ‘charity and company limited by guarantee’, 25% are city farms and 22% are charities. Although the funding sources for care farms varies extensively both between farms and between categories of care farm, nearly half of the care farms surveyed (49%) receive some funding from charitable trusts and 33% receive client fees from the local authority. The aims of this study are to : Examine the evidence base for the benefits of contact with nature and in particular green care services from agriculture; Provide evidence from published literature to support the development of care farming; Conduct a first overview of the range and number of current care farming initiatives currently operating in the UK; Carry out a more detailed analysis of approximately five different types of care farm to provide further data on psychological health and well-being effects to participants in order to give baseline information from which we hope to build a body of evidence to support the promotion and spread of care farming in the UK; Provide advice on good practice for appraising care farming activities in the countryside, including an analysis of evaluation criteria and a commentary on examples of good practice in appraisal, monitoring and evaluation found in the published literature and from existing research in Europe; Identify further research priorities for care farming in the UK.