Wilding by Isabella Tree
As Heard on The Daily Gardener Podcast:
This book came out in 2019, and the subtitle is The Return of Nature to a British Farm.
In this book, Isabella (whose last name - Tree - is perfect for a book on nature) guides us through the result of a massive rewilding project in West Sussex known as the Knepp ("Nep") experiment because it took place on the Knepp Estate.
Isabelle and her husband Charlie bought the estate in the 1980s from Charlie's grandparents. After recognizing that intensive farming on heavy clay was economically unsustainable, they decided to step back and let nature take over. To mimic the large animals that roamed Britain in the wild, they introduced free-roaming cattle, ponies, pigs, and deer and let nature dictate the outcome on 3,500 acres. The animal activity turns out to be the key to kickstarting diversity in flora and fauna. They removed the infrastructure of traditional farming like drains and fencing. In a little over a decade, wildlife and plant diversity returned. Knepp became home to turtle doves, nightingales, peregrine falcons, and lesser spotted woodpeckers. The beauty of a functioning ecosystem is that it sustains and encourages life all by itself.
This book is 384 pages of a personal memoir and a nature memoir - it's hopeful, inspirational, and above all, doable.
SI HORTUM IN HORTORIA PODCASTA IN BIBLIOTEHCA HABES, NIHIL DEERIT.
