The Wilder Garden
Adpating the Principles of Rewilding
with Charlie Harpur
Friday 18 September 2026
10am - 4pm (arrive at 9.30 for coffee/tea)
£150
Group Size - 10 people
Britain’s gardens cover an area larger than all of our national nature reserves combined. They represent a huge opportunity to provide vital life support and green corridors for our declining populations of insects, birds and mammals. Our gardens may have many functional roles to play and are not generally places where large scale ecological restoration with free roaming animals is possible. However, the principles of rewilding can offer useful inspiration for a shift of mindset to adopt different, experimental approaches to designing and managing a garden as a dynamic ecosystem.
As Head Gardener leading a team at the Walled Garden at the pioneering rewilding project, Knepp Estate, Charlie Harpur is uniquely placed to share how they have implemented this approach over the last five years. It’s not simply about just letting go and allowing natural processes to evolve, which would quickly result in a tangle of brambles and nettles with limited biodiversity. The intervention, skill and careful observation of the gardener can be a positive influence, nurturing the right conditions to encourage a complex mosaic of habitats, connectivity and maximum biodiversity,
Charlie will explain the design concepts behind the garden, including the choice of resilient planting, soil profiling and habitat creation. He’ll then go on to discuss the role of the gardener as a keystone species and the balance between allowing natural processes to evolve alongside having to make decisions about levels of disturbance, succession, weeding and pruning. In the afternoon we’ll head outside to discuss how you might implement some of these approaches in your own, or your client’s, garden.
Refreshments
Alison will prepare a delicous vegetarian lunch featuring produce from the garden and scrumptious savoury tarts made for us by Beth, the Freerange Chef. There will be home made biscuits on arrival and we will round up the day with tea and home made cake to ensure that your day will be as nourishing as it is informative. If you have any specific dietary requests do let us know on the booking form.
What to Bring
Check the weather forecast before you travel and ensure you bring appropriate clothing, whether that’s waterproofs or sun hats, or possibly both! You may wish to bring a notebook, camera and water bottle too.
Getting Here
Directions will be emailed to you a couple of weeks before the workshop. Use Damson Farm rather than the postcode on Google Maps.
Cancellation policy
If you need to cancel your place up to 28 days before the event you will be offered a credit towards another workshop. After that time, you’ll be offered a 50% refund if we’ve been able to re-sell the place. We are only able to promote places for re-sale up to 4 days before the event.