Rewild Your Garden

Join Charlie Harpur as he talks about the rewilding process at Knepp Castle Estate and how you can adapt it for your garden at home.

Charlie Harpur is a plantsman and landscape designer. Having trained as an architect, he worked for the landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith for several years. Charlie then gained practical experience in horticulture and ecology at gardens including the Chelsea Physic Garden and Kew, graduating with a Kew Diploma in Horticulture before returning to Tom’s studio in a more horticultural role.

Charlie is now Head Gardener at the Knepp Castle Estate where he oversees the rewilding of the Victorian walled garden, as well as the development of a new regenerative market garden.

Rewilding a garden does not just simply mean ‘letting go’. Instead, it requires thinking creatively, identifying ways in which disturbance can mimic and encourage natural processes. Given that a garden is rarely big enough for keystone species such as large herbivores, this is where we, as gardeners, can act as their proxy. Thinking like a beaver or a wild boar frees the mind from cultural constraints and can inject dynamism into even the smallest space. We can also maximise biodiversity by creating a mosaic of connected habitats within a garden. Using images and video clips of the Rewilded Walled Garden at Knepp Castle – a design collaboration between Tom Stuart-Smith and James Hitchmough – I’ll explain our adventurous transformation of a croquet lawn into a dynamic and diverse landscape providing niches for wildlife and nearly 1000 different plant species.

The talk will last 45-50 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A.

Join Charlie Harpur as he talks about the rewilding process at Knepp Castle Estate and how you can adapt it for your garden at home.

Charlie Harpur is a plantsman and landscape designer. Having trained as an architect, he worked for the landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith for several years. Charlie then gained practical experience in horticulture and ecology at gardens including the Chelsea Physic Garden and Kew, graduating with a Kew Diploma in Horticulture before returning to Tom’s studio in a more horticultural role.

Charlie is now Head Gardener at the Knepp Castle Estate where he oversees the rewilding of the Victorian walled garden, as well as the development of a new regenerative market garden.

Rewilding a garden does not just simply mean ‘letting go’. Instead, it requires thinking creatively, identifying ways in which disturbance can mimic and encourage natural processes. Given that a garden is rarely big enough for keystone species such as large herbivores, this is where we, as gardeners, can act as their proxy. Thinking like a beaver or a wild boar frees the mind from cultural constraints and can inject dynamism into even the smallest space. We can also maximise biodiversity by creating a mosaic of connected habitats within a garden. Using images and video clips of the Rewilded Walled Garden at Knepp Castle – a design collaboration between Tom Stuart-Smith and James Hitchmough – I’ll explain our adventurous transformation of a croquet lawn into a dynamic and diverse landscape providing niches for wildlife and nearly 1000 different plant species.

The talk will last 45-50 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A.