Water managers are working with increasingly complex social ecological systems with high uncertainty and competing social and environmental demands for water, prompting interest in freshwater adaptive management and environmental flows. Published literature has focused on theory or on documenting the biophysical outcomes of environmental flows. However, there are few examples where the biophysical outcomes of environmental flows are considered concurrently with research on community perceptions and social learning. In this paper we reflect on what we’ve learned from 10 years of integrating biophysical and social research to improve outcomes of environmental flows in Australia. We focus on two flow trials implemented in 2017/18 in the Wakool River system, southern Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. Both trials altered flows from the current operational norms in this system. Biophysical monitoring of these trials examined hydrological connectivity, water quality, river productivity and fish movement. Social inquiry involved semi structured interviews with 18 people with a ‘stake’ in the trials. We also reviewed planning documents, water-use reports and stakeholder committee minutes. The biophysical monitoring showed that the environmental flows had a positive outcome on the river ecosystem. Inductive thematic analysis of the stakeholder interviews revealed multiple framings for understanding the river system. Dominant frames include ‘engineering’, ‘accounting’, ‘restoration’, and ‘systems’. Of note were assumptions about what ‘ought’ to be occurring in the river system, in reference to ‘normal’, ‘natural’, and ‘historical’ river flow patterns, and what was right and wrong with management. These framings influence how stakeholders perceive the effectiveness of the environmental flow trials and the biophysical monitoring. We conclude how the ‘success’ or otherwise of the flow trials would have been perceived without integrated research such as this.