Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm

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Particularly timely . . . an excellent primer, and anyone who is interested in how we share the planet - what it looks like, what we eat, and what nature can teach us - should read this book. * Sunday Times * She discovers a country of violence and tenderness, haunted by its brutal colonial and revolutionary past, with a love of life and a passion for fiesta – a country of extremes.

Wilding by Isabella Tree | Goodreads Wilding by Isabella Tree | Goodreads

It's hard not to feel by the end of the book that fate called this couple to this task. Her husband is a baronet and graduate of Cirencester agricultural college - not someone who can be easily dismissed as a hippy conservationist. While she (long before this book) was already a published author and a talented communicator. When Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell realised that it was not economically feasible to continue their farming of land in Knepp, West Sussex, they made a bold and radical decision: they decided to step away from the land and watch as nature took over. This book describes the almost twenty years of that project/experiment. The results are staggering and challenge some fundamental assumptions that often guide even the most well-meaning of conservation or ecological decisions.This must be the most inspirational nature book of the year…a narrative of conservation, courage, vision and miracles…Read this book and marvel.’ Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, ‘The Year’s Best Books on Nature’. The author has seen incredible changes to the environment over the years. Whole chapters of this book are dedicated to the “glamour species” that have returned to the land - the nightingale, the turtle dove, the purple emperor. But it is the less glamorous creatures sitting low down in the food chain that are, for me, the real stars of the book. The great concerns of our time - climate change, natural resources, food production, water control and conservation, and human health - all boil down to the condition of the soil.”

Wilding Quotes by Isabella Tree - Goodreads Wilding Quotes by Isabella Tree - Goodreads

The project has become a leading light for nature conservation in the UK, demonstrating how a hands-off,'process-led' approach can restore land and wildlife in a dramatically short space of time.She married Sir Charles Burrell and lives at Knepp Castle in West Sussex. Her father was the son of Ronald Tree and a member of a well connected Anglo-American family active in politics and public life on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Excellent….Anyone who is interested in how we share the planet - what it looks like, what we eat, and what nature can teach us - should read this book.’ Sunday Times

Isabella Tree Books — Isabella Tree

a b Frances Mayes; Jason Wilson (2002). The Best American Travel Writing 2002. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp.347–. ISBN 0-618-11880-2.

Summary

Close to my book of the year. If there's anything better, I haven't read it yet . . . An uplifting story and points towards a different sort of farmed future. -- Marcus Berkmann, 'Best Books for Summer Reading' * Daily Mail * This joyful, poignant memoir tells the story of exhausted land becoming a rich ecosystem again and, in doing so, forces us to rethink farming.’ The Times, ‘Books of the Year’.

Isabella Tree - Wikipedia Isabella Tree - Wikipedia

Anyone with any interest in land - from a window-box to a National Park - needs to read this book. -- Simon Barnes, author of T he Meaning of Birds Wilding (2018) is Isabella Tree's account of how the Knepp estate in West Sussex changed from being a farm to a more natural environment. It's wonderful. Inspiring, informative and passionate. I learnt so much about how nature, left to its own devices, can transform an estate laid bare after decades of intensive agriculture into a rich, diverse ecosystem. All of that is the core topic of the book. But the other interesting aspect was something so obvious to Tree that it took a while to dawn on me. She starts the story by describing her and her husband's efforts to intensively farm their land, winning awards and setting records for dairy production despite unfavorable heavy clay soil. And as she described that work, I was picturing their land as a dairy farm similar to the ones I grew up near: big, rural fields in the country, with a small farmhouse near the sheds and dairy barns on the road. So when they got their land fenced and introduced feral cows and pigs, it seemed fairly reasonable. It was only when she started talking about how conflicts with dog walkers limited their breed choices, and how the wild pigs tried to steal food for a wedding they were hosting, that I remembered just how different things are in Britain. Then she mentions the castle and it all fell into place.

This must be the most inspirational nature book of the year . . . a narrative of conservation, courage, vision and miracles... The story of what happened is thrilling . . . the Knepp Conservation Project is world-famous: a beacon of hope . . . Read this book and marvel. -- Bel Mooney, 'The Year's Best Books on Nature' * Daily Mail * Biography at its best – well-researched and well-written, but also blessed with a mordant sense of humour that strangely complements the cranky figure of John Gould himself.' George Plimpton In Wilding, Isabella Tree tells the story of the 'Knepp experiment', a pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex, using free-roaming grazing animals to create new habitats for wildlife. Part gripping memoir, part fascinating account of the ecology of our countryside, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope. Isabella Tree, Lady Burrell (born 1964) is a British author and travel journalist. She is author of the Richard Jefferies Society Literature Award-winning book Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm that describes the creation of Knepp Wildland, the first large-scale rewilding project in lowland England. The 3,500 acres (1,400ha) wildland project was created in the grounds of Knepp Castle, the ancestral home of her husband, Sir Charles Burrell, a landowner and conservationist.