Rewilding minds

The Walled Garden at Knepp Castle in West Sussex, reimagined to a plan by Tom Stuart-Smith, is transforming how we think about gardening

- JODIE JONES

There is a whiff of existential angst blowing through the gardening world, highlighted by the heated debates that rage every time some iteration of a wild garden wins Gold at Chelsea. What plants should we be growing in our rapidly changing climate? And how can we balance the gardener’s urge to create a stimulating and beautiful space with our responsibilities to the planet, and all the creatures that share it with us?

Four years ago, proto-rewilders Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell set out to find their own solution at Knepp, the 3,500-acre Sussex farm they famously withdrew from conventional land management more than 20 years ago. As the wider estate exploded with a sky-rocketing diversity of plants and wildlife, the couple gradually became aware that their private walled garden, which continued to be managed with traditional formality, was looking increasingly incongruous. So they approached Tom Stuart-Smith with a conundrum – how do you rewild a garden?

Set within 19th-century walls, the Knepp Castle garden had already been through a number of changes over the years, but when Tom and his team were called in they found a plot of just over an acre, divided by a wall, to create an ornamental kitchen garden with raised beds and grass paths, and a simple swimming pool garden with a large croquet lawn. In comparison with the exuberance of the rewilded land, it was decidedly lacking in diversity.