‘The food system is where the big fight will happen for climate change in this country — and the time to start fixing that system is right now’: Meet the new generation joining the good fight at trailblazing Knepp
For the last quarter of a century, the Knepp estate in Sussex has become a pioneer of the rewilding revolution, and now a new generation is joining the cause. Oliver Berry meets Ned Burrell and Lia Brazier to talk wild charcuterie, climate change — and making their own Marmite.
Forty years ago, Charlie Burrell, 10th Baronet of Knepp, inherited his family pile in West Sussex: 3,500 acres on the edge of the rolling South Downs, encompassing arable fields, dairy herds, a manor house and a country park supposedly designed by Humphry Repton.
Fresh out of agricultural college, Charlie was excited about his farming future,but soon enough, the reality of running a farm on marginal land in a rural backwater of England hit hard. After decades of overgrazing, the estate’s soils were degraded, its habitats ravaged, its biodiversity as parlous as its finances. For the next 13 years, Charlie eked out a precarious living from the existing arable fields and dairy herds, but his land just got worse. Soil health declined. Wildlife disappeared. Biodiversity cratered.
In 1995, despondent and fearing for their future, Charlie and his wife, the writer and conservationist Isabella Tree, stumbled across the work of a little-known Dutch ecologist called Frans Vera who proposed a radical idea. What if, instead of fighting the land, lacing it with soil conditioners and chemical fertilisers in an attempt to restore what’s been lost, you simply left it to Mother Nature to do the work? Was it possible, Charlie wondered, to farm in a wilder way?
Twenty-six years later, Knepp has become a paragon for the rewilding movement. Since 2000, the land has recovered with astonishing vigour. Biodiversity has increased by 900%. Native shrubs and wildflowers carpet the once-barren clay soil. Rare species including turtle doves, nightingales, emperor butterflies, barbastelle bats and beavers have returned. And for the first time in six centuries, white storks are nesting at Knepp again. This transformation formed the basis for Wilding, Isabella Tree’s bestselling 2018 memoir. And now, a quarter of a century after embarking on their environmental experiment, the next generation are moving into the rewilding business.
Ned Burrell and Lia Brazier are part of a young and team who are beginning to explore new avenues for the estate beyond its own rewilded boundaries.
Ned Burrell has always known he would inherit Knepp one day. Along with his sister Nancy (now a biologist at Oxford University) he grew up on the estate, watching the rewilding experiment play out as the landscape morphed around him.
‘My dad thinks in 50-year cycles,’ he says. ‘Ever since I was little, I remember going with him to projects all over Europe, looking at beavers and bison and all that. I’ve just grown up with it. We often joke that Knepp is a bit of a cult. Once you're in, you can't escape.’
Now 29, Ned is the Director of Wilding Kitchen, Knepp’s award-winning restaurant, which received its first Green Michelin star for sustainability in 2026. It forms part of a cluster of food businesses, including the market garden and butchery, which sells the estate’s own wild-reared meat. Having trained as a chef at Ballymalloe Cookery School, followed by stints at restaurants including Brat, Kol, the Smoking Goat and St John’s, Ned is fired up about food, farming, and the way our agricultural system works — or, in his opinion, doesn’t.
‘There's often an argument that Knepp is pitted against food production,’ he says. ‘But actually, our experience shows how rewilding can sit alongside farming. Farming is the biggest leader in biodiversity loss in Europe. It’s where a lot of the environmental damage is done. Part of our work here is about opening up discussions around how we create a more resilient, sustainable food system. I’m passionate about it.’
Knepp Wilding Kitchen's land-to-plate menu is shaped by the seasons and inspired by the estate's rewilding ethos.
Knepp is home to the UK's largest colony of purple emperor butterflies and organises three-hour walking safaris for visitors keen to see them.
Ned’s partner, Lia Brazier, joined the Knepp cult a decade ago. An illustrator and designer from Zimbabwe, she is now Knepp’s creative director, overseeing branding, retail, interiors and product design. ‘Ned’s been on this journey since he was a boy,’ she says, ‘but I’m a newbie. We got together 10 years ago, and as soon as I came here, I just fell in love with the landscape. Things work surprisingly quickly in rewilded systems, and it’s been so exciting to see these transformations happening in the time I’ve been here.’
Together, Ned and Lia form part of the dynamic young team who are beginning to explore new avenues for the estate beyond its own rewilded boundaries, finding fresh ways to communicate its ethos to the wider world.
‘For me, one of the main issues is that there's just this massive mismanagement of resources in the UK,’ says Ned. ‘Twenty percent of our land is producing just 3% of our overall output. If that land was put across to a system like rewilding, it would be enough to offset all the carbon in our food system. So there's huge scope for change.’
For Ned, animals are central to the rewilding revolution. Rather than traditional breeds, Knepp’s animals are proxies for species which once roamed wild across Britain: longhorn cattle for aurochs; roe and fallow deer for wild deer; Exmoor ponies for horses; Tamworth pigs for wild boars. According to rewilding theory, each of these species occupied a cornerstone role within the ancient ecosystem; Knepp is simply replacing what’s been lost, restoring habitats lost due to industrialised agriculture.
‘Our animals are substitutes for ones that are extinct,’ he explains. ‘Our heavy browsers feed on scrubland, allowing light to get in. Different habitats spring up from that. We mimic booms and busts in nature, only taking animals off the land when there's not enough vegetation, or their impact is becoming too large. Nutrients are returned through composting and recycling. That’s where the restaurant and butchery comes in: it allows our visitors to participate directly in that life cycle, and we get this incredible, unique rewilded meat no-one else has.’
But as Ned admits, the approach has its drawbacks, not least that running a business according to the cycles of nature means that outcomes are inherently unpredictable. ‘The land comes first here, always, which means the butchery and the kitchen have to take what we’re given.’ For the first time, he says, Knepp will sell out of its own meat this summer — a new prospect that’s prompted the beginning of a new journey, forming partnerships with like-minded suppliers who share Knepp’s rewilding DNA.
‘For us, it’s been this amazing opportunity to build a community, championing people we believe are doing the right thing,’ says Lia. ‘Hopefully, as Knepp’s influence grows, we can convince more producers to do the same, supporting them through that transition.’
Knepp's slow-grown meat is available to purchase in boxes, alongside products from trusted partners.
Knepp’s butchery has been running since 2019; Wilding Kitchen since 2023. Before they opened, Ned explains, the estate was receiving around 9,000 visitors a year. That figure is now closer to 140,000. He thinks this is a clear indication that people are engaged with Knepp’s desire to reshape the agricultural landscape and create a more circular food system. But while food – and farming – will clearly continue to be a part of the estate’s future, both Ned and Lia think it’s vital for Knepp to diversify.
‘One thing we recognise is that not everyone's going to engage in our story through an ecology lens,’ says Lia. ‘Maybe not even a food lens. So we’re looking at different ways to reach people and bring them on board with rewilding. There are lots of ways we can do that, I think: through collaborations, cultural events, workshops, product design.’
Knepp’s glamping business is one example of such diversification in action. It has a cult following: spaces for its treehouses, cabins, yurts and bell tents sell out for the entire summer, often within days of going on sale. Equally popular are tours of the walled garden, along with guided wildlife safaris with estate rangers to explore rewilded areas. Knepp’s charcuterie range has been another success; it’s now stocked in dozens of farm shops across the UK, and has even found its way onto the rarified shelves of Fortnum & Mason. ‘We’re working on making our own Marmite with a local brewer, too,’ says Ned. ‘Believe it or not, it’s surprisingly difficult.’
Alongside devising a name for their nascent yeast extract, the couple have plenty of other projects in the pipeline. One long-term idea is to reconnect Knepp with the sea: it’s just 12 miles to the south coast, and restoring the lost link between inland and coastal habitats has been a long-held dream. It is part of an even grander vision: to create a network of nature corridors between rewilded estates across the UK, connecting wild pockets into one huge, integrated whole. There are also putative plans for an events building to host workshops and concerts. There’s even hushed talk of a brand new Knepp site: perhaps an inner-city version, bringing the rewilding concept into the urban landscape.
Though these are all currently just ideas, Ned admits, if there’s one thing that Knepp has shown over the last 20 years, it’s that thinking big is the only real way to make change happen.
‘As a society, I think we have to start thinking much further ahead,’ he says. ‘Historically, we’ve not been good at that. You know, by 2050, southern England will have the same climate as the south of France currently has. The food system is where the big fight will happen for climate change in this country — and the time to start fixing that system is right now. We really shouldn't be thinking 50 years into the future. We should be thinking 500 years, because that’s what nature does. And that’s what Knepp is all about.’
