His visit, coming at a time when their farm business was also inexorably failing, proved to be an epiphany. In 1999, ancient oaks on their land were inspected by expert Ted Green who told the couple their ancient trees were failing because their intensive farming methods were harming their roots and destroying the subterranean mycorrhize – the fungal network so crucial to tree health. Even though they doubled crop yields, their intrinsically “marginal” soil – heavy weald clay – was never going to allow them to produce high yields of crops. Though farmed intensively since WW2, the farm had rarely made a profit, even with recent owners Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree trying every modern method idea available, from investing in the latest machinery and pesticides to producing their own ice cream.
Knepp Castle Estate comprises 3500 acres in Sussex, a few miles south west of Gatwick Airport. Nor reading something on virtually every page that turned long- held assumptions of mine about farming and wildlife conservation on their head.
Nor about its boldness the resentment from the local community, who felt a perfectly lovely farm estate was being ruined and the land left to waste, is only recently receding as the other benefits become more apparent. I wasn’t expecting to read about the sheer scale of the project – the largest of its kind to date on a farm in the UK. Wilding is instead a cool-headed and painstaking account by co-owner Isabella Tree of one of the most audacious natural projects to take place in the UK in recent decades – the return to nature of a complete farming estate over nearly 20 years, and what that has meant for the people and animals, and the very land itself. I was expecting some hippie-dippy, idyllic yarn of a nice couple taking on a farm and planting a few native plants, some kind of Durrell-esque account of farming life. I’d found my way to Knepp via the book telling its story, Wilding, which is recently out in paperback. I have to admit I approached the book with no great enthusiasm. Because the returning of nature to this former failing farm is proving so bountiful, and so visible, and so audible, that it will make you realise how quiet and empty of nature so much of our farmed countryside actually is these days.
If you decide to visit Knepp, the epic rewilding project at the Knepp Estate in Sussex, this summer – and I would urge you to do so – it might just ruin the rest of our UK countryside for you. Paul Bursche explores the 18 year+ rewilding experiment unfolding on a farm in Sussex – and the book which tells its story
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