Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm

For years Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell struggled to make a go as farmers, doing everything they could to make the heavy clay soils of their farm at Knepp in West Sussex as productive as possible, while rarely succeeding in making a profit. By 2000, facing bankruptcy, the couple decided they would try something new. They would hand their 3,500 acres, farmed for centuries, even millennia, back to nature. They would let it go wild. With minimal human intervention, and with herds of free-roaming animals stimulating new habitats, Knepp is now full of new life. Tree’s book, Wilding (New York Review), points the way to a richer future – a countryside that benefits farming, nature, and us.