Elmore Estate: A nature fuelled escape – reflections on rewilding

A thought piece by our colleague Katherine Astbury (Stewart) on rewilding and embracing a different aesthetic within our countryside…

Feral – Adjective – In a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication.

After a busy couple of years planning a wedding, my now husband and I spent a week at Rewild Things nestled in the Elmore Estate in Gloucestershire. Elevated in the trees, we stayed in a beautiful tree house cabin that connected us with nature everywhere we turned. Not only did the treehouse’s outdoor decking have stunning panoramic views of the estate’s wetlands, it contained an outdoor (but thankfully heated!) kitchen and bath which enabled us to be fully immersed in the sounds, colours and smells of nature throughout our stay.

Nature can play a vital role in enabling a healthy lifestyle and mindset. Visiting Elmore Court’s Rewild Things let us recharge and explore their latest quest to rewild some of the estate. In their own words, Elmore estate has been “rewilding a portion of their land” to allow “nature to flourish” and enable biodiversity to increase. This can be seen when exploring their grounds which house a range of habitats comprising native trees; hedgerows; scrublands; grasslands and scrapes.

Home to a plethora of wildlife from birds to insects and reptiles alongside a roaming herd of British Longhorn cattle, Rewild Things’ explains how their vision is to allow the landscape to “transform into something a good distance from what you normally find in the English countryside. Something perhaps closer to what you might find in Africa. Rich and buzzing with life”. This feeling far from the English countryside is something I can say they achieved. When walking along the bending boardwalk to navigate to the tree house through the Laurel trees you feel like you are walking within a Jungle rather than within an English estate.

A significant ecological addition Elmore Court has recently added are their man-made scrapes, added to encourage new habitats to thrive and existing habitats to grow. Some key features, design objectives and benefits of introducing scrapes are:

– Similar to ditches, they are usually found on farmland and provide a space to control rainwater attenuation year-round.

– Have a depth of 1 metre with sloped edges.

– Provide an environment perfect for aquatic plants and a wide selection of insects such as dragonflies, water beetles and hoverflies.

– Attract a larger selection of birds and amphibians with year-round food due to the aquatic plants and insects where the land would have often otherwise been arable land with low biodiversity opportunities.

– After experiencing the benefits of scrapes first hand, perhaps this is an approach that can be adopted at scale on arable land, particularly poorer quality farmland which can encourage greater biodiversity within farmland and BNG-offsetting sites.