Rewilding the Knepp Castle walled garden

We’ve just embarked on the exciting journey of rewilding the old Victorian walled garden at Knepp. We’d love to share with you the processes as we plan and create what we hope will be an inspirational wild garden. Suzi and Moy, our wonderful head gardeners, will be documenting the changes through words and images as we go.

We’ll be applying what we’ve learnt from rewilding the larger landscape at Knepp to this small scale, 1.5 acre garden and the adjoining one-acre orchard, trying to kick-start self-willed processes at small scale, increase biodiversity and create a really interesting, dynamic, varied and beautiful natural space.

It’ll involve a big change in mindset from the conventional, rather up-tight garden we’re used to and we’re delighted to have the wonderful garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith masterminding the plans. With him on our Wild Garden advisory board are Prof Mick Crawley, emeritus professor of plant ecology at Imperial College, Prof James Hitchmough, professor of horticultural ecology at the University of Sheffield, and Jekka McVicar, author and organic gardening expert, who have been charged with pushing our thinking out of the box.

We’re planning to offer garden safaris and training courses in the near future, so watch this space…

The garden is not open to the public.