My first real garden began with the manual removal of dozens of cubic metres of exhausted topsoil only to be faced with a formidable plastic antiweed barrier and then about four inches of solid Sussex clay. And that was for a garden, a small plot (for non-gardeners: 'plot' is an official human measurement of land with no measurement whatsoever.) As I do this again with my latest garden (life is but a necklace of gardens) a historic, walled garden in rural England, I'm reminded of a stanza from Wendell Berry's early poetry:

There will be a resurrection of the wild.
Already it stands in wait
at the pasture fences.
It is rising up
in the waste places of the cities
When the fools of the capitals
have devoured each other
in righteousness,
and the machines have eaten
the rest of us, then
there will be a second coming
of the trees. They will come
straggling over the fences
slowly, but soon enough.
From "The Window Poems" 

I toil and work exhaustively with each successive garden (this is my last one, bury me in it under the lilac) to achieve what's desired and remove what is not, but what about stepping back? Simply removing ourselves, doing nothing. Letting Berry's resurrection take hold? What then? What about all the plastic I'm removing? What about the invasive species? What about the space-eating bindweed and light-swallowing brambles? Letting nature thrive is much more than letting nature thrive. We have done too much to merely step back. 

Last summer, I declined to mow the grass. Simple adherence to Hermann Melville's famous line: "I'd prefer not to." A field appeared. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

Imagine enticing and enhancing an entire field to grow what's desired and abandon what's not. Sleeves rolled up, elbows into it, back aching, fighting against delicate enemies that en masse could have stopped armies. "Tackling the bramble along the western edge of the field," writer and professor James Canton jots in his field notes, "I dress as though to go into combat." It is gardening, rewilding, or 'renaturing' as Canton renames in his splendid, methodical account, Renaturing: Small Ways to Wild the World of turning his two acre patch (another non-measurement term of measurement) into a wild habitat. 

Combat necessary to make something what it once was.

5 December
The snow has gone — as if it never came. 

8 December
Back to tackling the bramble along the western edge of the field. I dress as though to go into combat.

Wilding is never as simple as letting things go - although some nature would always emerge should we step out — but what nature, and for whom? Turning nature back into its best self is a strategic investment of body and soul. It's a conviction that if we do these things now, things later will come, most likely after we're dead. Canton spent years renaturing the exhausted space behind his Essex home: digging a pond, nurturing meadowlands, creating space for Berry's wild resurrection. But first, the bramble removal.

10 December
Working away with loppers at the bramble bank, I am halted by the sudden presence of a family of long-tailed tits. I stop and watch — awed by their industry, their joy as they dash about the oak branches above. This is one benefit of working without power seeing the silhouettes of other beings as they appear before me, being present to the life of the field even while chopping and lopping.

11 December
The bramble bank is huge. It runs the entire length of the western edge of the field some 300 yards or so. Once the blackthorn had been cut down and the first meadow patch sown with yellow rattle, the plan was to hack the bramble back so as to make another, longer meadow that would stretch the extent of the field. Already that feels an endless task.

20 December
Working at the bramble bank for an hour in the half-light of the early afternoon.

21 December
On this shortest of days, I stand in the field as the sun rises over the copse of oak and goat willow. Later, I will watch the sun set, bear full witness to the winter solstice. Tomorrow the light will start to return.

A few years ago I read Canton's The Oak Papers, the slow, respectful and spirited tale of a man and a multi-century old tree, two embodied beings in unspoken conversation. Canton is a radiant teacher and the Director of Wild Writing at the University of Essex, England. I sought him out after reading Oak Papers, told him I was writing about his book, and he offered to introduce me to the oak.

When I asked him how Oak Papers came about Canton said something I'll never forget: "I heard about the tree, got to know it, and knew I was going to write about it. I knew it was going to take years." The cadence of time is something Canton understands: nature's time. In Oak Papers he visits the oak, sits in her (I've decided it's a 'her; although Canton insists the tree is beyond gender), and passes her time. He does the same in Renaturing. Changing something is extraordinarily slow, physical, and mental. Sitting in the oak, or the field, takes time. It takes empathy, it takes work. Bramble removal.

1 February
Cutting the bramble bank back again — armed today with modern weapons. I hold an electric hedge trimmer tied to 100 metres of cable running all the way to the cottage. My armour is on protection for face, eyes, hands, arms and body as I wade into the morass of aged thorn. My plan is to cut the old growth down at the ground, drag it away to be piled high and burnt – then return in due course with the mattock to tackle the roots in rather drier weather.

9 February
A few days away from the bramble. White finger from holding the monstrous trimming machine means I cannot close my hands. I wonder if an aged sickle I have found in the shed will help.

There is something about Canton removing the brambles that speaks to the extraordinary work he undertook to renature this field. Nothing would change until they were removed. Yes, it takes time; yes, it takes effort; yes, it takes us to be outside of us. In renaturing (Canton's term for land that is smaller than that required for rewilding), we must dehuman the humaned spaces.

Ox-eye daisy, primrose, cowslip, common knapweed, yarrow, ivy, cornflower and many others from Canton's wildflower field list grew. And then we moved out and the lawn was cut. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

It feels as though I have been on a long, winding voyage to far-distant lands. Yet I am here still - stood in the field where once I sat on a machine and mowed some rough form of cricket pitch to play upon with my friends; where now I mow patches of wildflower meadow with a scythe.

Summer has become autumn, then winter. Still I am here, working away in the field.

Oak trees began growing in Canton's two-acre field, through the brambles. As he works, Canton releases these slender trunks to the sun, to the wind - all the elements that allow them to become who they are. In thirty years they will grow, shade, and kill any remaining brambles themselves. Owning the field once again, turning it into a copse, turning it back into a forest.

Now, the bramble has been cut back and the wildflower meadows have been sown. There is still the leggy, tired blackthorn hedge beside the green lane that needs to be cut down and laid out as nesting sites for songbirds in the spring. There will continue to be bramble to cut back and in time there will be meadows to mow. There will always be a need for intervention in an ecological restoration project of this size.

Renaturing the field will go on and on.

And in the meantime, Canton promises: "Summer has become autumn, then winter. Still, I am here, working away in the field. Renaturing the fields will go on and on." It is a deep, great comfort that humans are working extraordinarily hard to undo all the humaning we've done.