A Wilding Year: Rewilding a Lincolnshire Farm

A Wilding Year tells the deeply personal journey of artist Hannah Dale and her husband, as they return their Lincolnshire farm to nature, celebrating the return of an astonishing variety of wildlife.

The farm was a sad inheritance, after a brain tumour took her ‘kind and inspirational’ father-in-law too soon. The land was not fertile for growing any food, so they decided instead to restore the original drained (from centuries ago) land to help wildlife.

Jack’s dad was a regenerative farmer. And after he read about the rewilding of a Sussex farm, they decided their land was suit the same, and a be fitting tribute to his father (who had even invented a seed drill that did not disturb his beloved earthworms).

So together they began to plant trees, create wildlife ponds and scatter wildflower seeds, to bring back the wildlife, and create natural homes for them. Now just a few years later, they have blossoming hedgerows that burst with berries in autumn.

Grasses ‘fizz with insects’, and over 1000 meadow brown butterflies fly over creeping thistles. Birds sing and owls hunt, goldfinches to chatter to each other, and badgers snuffle for worms.

The rewilding project saw these marshy wetlands herald the return of skylarks, meadow pipits, hobbies and polecats to their farm. Which also provided new inspiration for her wildlife paintings.