I hardly ever read non-fiction, but found this in my mum’s
local Waterstones. It’s all about the area where I grew up, a beautiful area of
West Sussex in South East England: the ‘hammer pond’ mentioned is where we used to go
for family walks, the village names, Shipley, Henfield, Partridge Green resonate
with me. When Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell took over the land
that his family had farmed for generations, Knepp,
they were convinced that modernisation was the answer. They spent heavily to
bring the farm up to speed, but still teetered from year to year, never really
making it pay. Eventually, horribly in debt, they had to admit it was over and
a new idea began to emerge. Wilding. It all began with an ailing oak tree,
adrift on a tiny island of grass amidst their ploughed fields. As they began to
understand that they had caused the sickness, by removing any connectivity the
tree had with the surrounding surface soil that nurtured it, a bold plan
emerged: stop farming and let the land go back to nature, introducing
free-roaming cows, deer, rootling pigs, to make a livelihood. I rarely read non-fiction,
am not an eco-warrior and know nothing about farming, but Isabella Tree walks
us through the steps to what Knepp has become – a beacon of bio-diversity and
returning rare breeds. Turtle doves, peregrine falcons and purple emperor
butterflies have appeared from nowhere and started breeding. Scientists and
ecologists alike have been shocked at how fast the habitat can return to
sustaining all types of rare and almost extinct species, from fungus, to
otters. Time and again, when there appeared to be a problem with some
particular plant or breed running out of control, another unforeseen event –
weather, predator – would remove the problem without intervention. The message
is clear. It’s not too late, there is hope. But it will take a political will
to roll this benefit out to a wider sphere. Knepp,
after all, has benefitted from various countryside grants. Isabella Tree
challenges our preconceptions of the countryside we love, manicured, tidy, a
vista of rolling hills and golden squares waiting to be harvested, with the
occasional picturesque hedgerow. An idyllic sort of countryside that we think is timeless, but in fact is quite recent. Wilding on the other hand, makes things messy. Like life.
