The UK Government has announced £79 million of new funding to help communities across England restore nature and adapt to climate change. Of that, £53 million will support the planting of up to 500,000 trees outside traditional woodlands including in streets, parks and places close to where people live and work. A further £26 million […]
Rewilding can sound ambitious. Wolves returning to national parks. Huge estates being transformed. Thousands of acres handed back to nature. But one small project in the Tamar Valley demonstrates something much more useful. At Larkrise, near St Dominic, around 10 acres of previously poorly drained land have been allowed to become wilder. Less than seven years […]
You do not need acres of land to make space for nature. That is one of the most useful lessons from Pear Tree Park in Ealing, West London, where a former golf course is being transformed into a more varied urban landscape of wildflower meadows, native trees and wetlands. More than 5,000 trees have already […]
Sometimes rewilding begins with hundreds of acres of land, major funding and ambitious restoration plans. And sometimes it begins in a garden shed. Glowworms have returned to Nosterfield Nature Reserve in North Yorkshire for the first time in more than 100 years, following a remarkably low-budget conservation project involving an ecologist, volunteers and hundreds of […]
A major rewilding project on the Sussex coast is demonstrating something that applies just as much to a suburban garden, balcony or community green space as it does to a 100-mile stretch of coastline. Sussex Bay brings together hundreds of communities and organisations working towards a healthier marine ecosystem between Selsey Bill and Camber Sands. What […]
At Burrow Beck, Lancaster City Council has combined a new solar farm with a programme of habitat creation. Four hectares of previously species-poor agricultural land are being planted with native wildflowers, hedgerows, trees and aquatic vegetation. Ecologists forecast the work could increase biodiversity on the site by approximately 90%. The scale may be bigger than the […]
A former farm field in Norfolk has become a species-rich wildflower meadow with remarkably little human intervention. Its story offers a simple lesson for anyone interested in rewilding: sometimes helping nature means doing less, doing it differently, and giving wildlife time to return. Sayer’s Old Meadow in North Norfolk , a former arable field has […]
Rewilding a garden doesn't require acres of land, major landscaping or even a particularly large garden. Sometimes, changing the shape of the ground beneath your feet can make a surprising difference. A recent Guardian article highlighted the idea of creating mounds in gardens using existing soil, rubble, branches and organic material , drawing inspiration from […]
The devastating fire at Dunwich Heath in Suffolk has highlighted an increasingly important question: can rewilding help create landscapes that cope better with hotter, drier conditions? The answer is yes - but resilience comes from creating a richer mix of habitats, not simply leaving nature alone. And some of the same principles can be applied […]
Recent gardening experts have been championing a simple but powerful idea known as keystone planting . Instead of trying to grow as many different plants as possible, the approach focuses on choosing a relatively small number of native species that support the greatest variety of wildlife. It's an encouraging message because it proves that successful […]
