Fay Young describes her rewilding journey on a ten-acre site in Scotland – which began long before rewilding became an international movement

Rewilding was not a word in the 1990s when we bought our ten acres of temptingly untended land.  Or at least not a word we had heard.

I'm wondering now what that means about us and what we are doing here at Pond Cottage. It's been a teasing thought since Ray and I were paid an unexpected and touching tribute at a recent Climate Cafe event. An evening woodland walk exploring Nature and Wellbeing began with introductions at the gazebo on our newly mown lawn.

Surrounded by the trees we had planted on a slice of former farmland more than 25 years ago, the inspiringly enterprising local Climate Cafe co-ordinator, Gosia Stanton, generously described the results as an inspiring example of local rewilding. It's an inspiration, she said, showing what can be done.

Trees surrounding the pond at Pond Cottage

Weeks later, that heart-warming moment still has me searching. Through books, websites, memories. I'm not at all sure we knew what we were looking for, two forty-something journalists with three growing sons, back in the last decade of the 20th century. (Seems a more innocent time? Don't forget IRA bombs, BNP marches, first terrorist attack on World Trade Centre, growing awareness of global warming…).

At any rate, we found ourselves on a woodland island surrounded by farmland. If it hadn't been for the stony hillocks and swampy hollows defying agricultural or property development our little patch of planted trees would have long ago been drawn into what the estate agent had described as “unspoilt farming land”.  Or a new housing estate.

The farm-worker's cottage, as it looked in the 1990s

An acre of the farmland was included in the sale. Potential for a garden if the derelict farm-worker's cottage got planning permission. And a long lesson in the reality of 'wild gardening'.

Wet, windy, weedy, wildness

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid

Wild, wildlife, wilderness, rewilding. Words with a human hinterland. Inevitably they mean different things to different people in different places, and at different times.

I'm remembering, a little ruefully, that I botched what seemed like a promising meeting with VisitScotland early in the 21st century. Hoping for funding to launch a series of Tread Softly guides to the wilder woodland gardens of Scotland (as a role model for good land management), I pointed out that there is no real wilderness, least of all (then) in the Highlands. The young marketing manager froze. That wasn't how she was trained to sell Scottish scenery to the tourist masses. And VisitScotland still presents a romantic interpretation of the 'natural scenery' of Scotland's landscape.

But times are changing. National Trust for Scotland, for example, is among many organisations proudly investing in ambitious rewilding schemes on their land (the wild transformation of Mar Lodge).

Camassias in a new spring meadow; path through young woodland

But we learned a lot from the acre of farmland. In the early stages it was fascinating to watch the waves of natural succession colonising open ground from one spring to another: first daisies, next knapweed, then great clouds of frothy umbellifers.

After perhaps centuries of cultivation the ground is very fertile. Easy to dig, lots of weeds, but very few wild meadow flowers. No poppies or corn flowers. Lots of thistles! We planted trees and cut paths through rank weeds. A hands-on, hands-off approach. Unwittingly, it seems, we have been undertaking 'Passive rewilding' – according to definitions in a Cambridge University publication with a tantalising title: Rewilding: a captivating, controversial, twenty-first century concept to address ecological degradation in a changing world:

Passive rewilding refers to abandoned post-agricultural landscapes that are no longer actively managed, a framing that is current especially in Europe. It could be seen as an alternative to classic environmental management, substituting management for nature with management by nature. This framing of rewilding is conceptually close to ecological rewilding, which involves limited active management to facilitate natural processes and allow them to regain dominance.

Cambridge University Press

Rewilding has become a global movement, part ecological philosophy, part hands-on hard work. The most ambitious schemes seek to reintroduce the big predators that could restore an ancient healthy balance in the natural world. The Scottish Rewilding Alliance aims to make Scotland the world's first rewilding nation. And, after a lot of consulting, the Scottish Government has approved a definition of the word to cover many applications:

"Rewilding means enabling nature's recovery, whilst reflecting and respecting Scotland's society and heritage, to achieve more resilient and autonomous ecosystems.”

Scottish Government

That can mean reintroducing beavers to watery woodland, reforesting bare hillsides by keeping deer out of highland estates – or simply involving school children in sowing seeds and planting spring bulbs on community land.  The impacts can be astonishing as we've seen on walks with friends along riverbanks in transformed landscapes. Not just trees but grasses, flowers, wildlife of all kinds, and smiling children.

Hands-on, hands-off

Back to our much smaller plot. No plans for lynx, or even beavers – though with the occasional grey intruding on red squirrel territory we would not say no to a pine marten. As the two of us began to realise what we had taken on, we saw no point trying to tidy up. We let a lot of things be, which is not bad for conservation (Intriguingly a woodland survey by a Reforesting Scotland expert this year identified our willow carr wetland – where we rarely set foot – as our richest habitat).

A wild plum is one of many native trees on site that are helping to boost biodiversity

Time for taking stock

Every gardener and grower I meet agrees this has been a hard year. Yet looking out the window at our 'passively rewilded' field the trees are full of berries and branches full of birds. Among this year's most enjoyable events in our garden are the birdringing sessions sensitively carried out by diligent British Trust for Ornithology volunteers. The most recent findings included now resident nuthatches, as well as visiting goldcrests, and a large blackbird whose plumage indicates a European visitor, here for the winter perhaps.

I've updated our Scotland's Gardens Scheme entry for next year. We have a lot of active work ahead (thank goodness for Lindsay our Friday gardener).

It was distressing in May to see bats desperate with hunger appearing at mid-day to seek food – but cheering to find them out hunting on mild autumn evenings. This challenging summer has revealed the need for sowing and growing many more flowers and fruits to support a great gathering of wildlife throughout the year.

Tidying up my messy pile of books and notes (prevarication is the first rule of writing) I found Ray's handwritten note from a Nature and Wellbeing exercise set by our guide, RSPB's Daniel Wright, at that Climate Cafe event.

“We sometimes say that Pond Cottage is a battle against nature.” Ray wrote, “But it is not. It's impossible for us to “garden” the whole area, some three quarters of it is gardened by nature. With no help from us – and it is that which gives the place its character.”

By not for nature.

Fay Young trained as a newspaper journalist with EMAP in Spalding, Lincolnshire and worked for the Oxford Mail and Times before moving to Scotland with her husband Ray Perman in 1975. Since then, her work has evolved through newspapers, magazines and books, to new media publishing. The Pond Garden at Pond Cottage is a wild woodland and wetland garden, creatively adapting to the challenges of climate change, and can visited under the Scotland's Gardens Scheme.

A log pile provides a habitat for all kinds of wildlife

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