It is illustrated in full colour with lino prints and watercolours by Angela Harding, photographs from Knepp, and easy in-garden activities to ‘re-wild’ your own spaces.

Knepp is now home to some of the rarest and most beautiful creatures in the UK, including nightingales, peregrine falcons, scarce chaser dragonflies, and purple emperor butterflies. When you walk out into the scrubland on an early spring morning the sound of birdsong is so loud it feels like it’s vibrating in your lungs. This is the story of Knepp, and a guide telling you how to bring wildlife back where you live.

Includes timelines, an in-depth look at rewilding, spotlight features about native animals including species that have returned and thrive – butterflies, bats, owls and beetles.

The book encourages you to slow down and observe the natural world around you, understand the connections between species and habitats, and the huge potential for life right on your doorstep.

‘Perfect for anyone looking to make the life of even a hedgehog a little easier’ – Daily Mail

‘Get this great guide and be inspired’ – STEPHEN FRY

‘A handbook of hope … Buy it, read it, start changing things right now’ – JOANNA LUMLEY
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The enormity of climate change and biodiversity loss can leave us feeling overwhelmed. How can an individual ever make a difference?

Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell know firsthand how spectacularly nature can bounce back if you give it the chance. And what comes is not just wildlife in super-abundance, but solutions to the other environmental crises we face.

The Book of Wilding is a handbook for how we can all help restore nature. It is ambitious, visionary and pragmatic. The book has grown out of Isabella and Charlie’s mission to help rewild Britain, Europe and the rest of the world by sharing knowledge from their pioneering project at Knepp in Sussex. It is inspired by the requests they receive from people wanting to learn how to rewild everything from unprofitable farms, landed estates and rivers, to ponds, allotments, churchyards, urban parks, gardens, window boxes and public spaces.. The Book of Wilding has the answers.
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‘Brilliantly readable and incredibly hard-working’ – HUGH FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL

‘A deep, dazzling and indispensable guide to the most important task of all: the restoration of the living planet’ – GEORGE MONBIOT

Winner of the Richard Jefferies Society and White Horse Book Shop Literary Prize.

Forced to accept that intensive farming on the heavy clay of their land at Knepp was economically unsustainable, Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell made a spectacular leap of faith: they decided to step back and let nature take over. Thanks to the introduction of free-roaming cattle, ponies, pigs and deer – proxies of the large animals that once roamed Britain – the 3,500 acre project has seen extraordinary increases in wildlife numbers and diversity in little over a decade.

Extremely rare species, including turtle doves, nightingales, peregrine falcons, lesser spotted woodpeckers and purple emperor butterflies, are now breeding at Knepp, and populations of other species are rocketing. The Burrells’ degraded agricultural land has become a functioning ecosystem again, heaving with life – all by itself.

Personal and inspirational, Wilding is an astonishing account of the beauty and strength of nature, when it is given as much freedom as possible.

Highly Commended by the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize.