The Garden Gadabout

A Botanical Adventure - The Rewilding of Knepp Estate.

I first heard of Knepp through a friend who had recently been touring gardens in the United Kingdom. A place where a new narrative, a new vision for a very old story had been rolled out across the 3500 acre, 12th century estate that sat only 16 miles from Gatwick Airport. It was, in short, an environmental triumph. When my friend, a well known garden designer, spoke about Knepp, her eyes widened and she used her hands to tell the story of her experience, there was excitement in her pitch and not only that, an insistance too. She wanted me to know Knepp, to see it for myself.

My friend spoke of the 10th Baron, Charlie Burrell who took over the estate from his grandparents in the eighties and had brought forth an idea by 2001 to “rewild” the family’s land that had blundered through a relatively short farming spell in it’s otherwise long thousand year history. Experiencing “porridge” like conditions in the wet months, the Baron’s words, and turned concrete in the summer, agriculture had done little to keep the great expense of maintaining such a property, solvent and when inherited, the 10th Baron also took over substantial debt.