Rewild Your Garden

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.

Host or Publisher Trebah Garden Trust