Isabella Tree

Isabella Tree (1964) is a conservation pioneer that has proved that if nature is allowed to take its own course, magic happens. She and her husband, Charlie Burrel brought the 3,500 acre Knepp Castle Estate back to life by letting it grow wild and abandoning the history of industrial and dairy farming. 

Their story is one of environmental hope. Up until the early 2000s, the land was polluted and degraded and then she turned the former farm’s depleted, loss-making land into the site of the largest rewilding experiment in lowland England: an experiment that has produced astonishing wildlife successes in a relatively short space of time and offers solutions for some of our most pressing problems – like soil restoration, flood mitigation, water and air purification, pollinating insects and carbon sequestration. 

“There are more gardens acreage-wise than there are nature reserves in Britain, and if people could manage their gardens better — less — and organically, that could have an enormous effect on wildlife. It doesn’t matter what patch of earth you are in charge of, even if it’s your window box; you can move further down that scale to get wilder.”

Location: Knepp Castle Estate, UK 

Books: Wilding 2018 – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38891828-wilding

Website: 1) https://www.kneppestate.co.uk/ 2) https://knepp.co.uk/background

Video 1: The Gentle Woman 
Video 2: Rewilding
Video 3: Lecture Series