meet the team

  • Charlie Burrell, co-owner of Knepp Estate, is the driving force behind its pioneering rewilding project. He inherited the estate from his grandparents in the 1980’s and spent 17 years intensifying the Estate’s arable and dairy business, however, farming on the heavy Sussex clay remained unprofitable.

    In the 1990s Charlie had a dramatic change of heart and today all 3,500 acres of the Knepp Estate are dedicated to the rewilding project, where free-roaming herds of cattle, horses, pigs, and deer play a crucial role in habitat regeneration.

    Beyond Knepp, Charlie is deeply involved in major conservation efforts, founding Rewilding Britain and serving on the boards of Nattergal, Foundation Conservation Carpathia, RePLANET, Rewilding Europe, Arcadia, and the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme.

  • James completed a BSC (Hons.) in Environmental Horticulture in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bath in 1979, and a PhD in Database Design for Landscape Plant Selection in 1984. He worked as a Lecturer/Senior Lecture at Burnley College, University of Melbourne, Australia from 1983-93. James commenced as Reader in the Department of Landscape, University of Sheffield in 1995, was appointed Professor in Horticultural Ecology in 2004, and Head of Department from 2014-18.  He retired in September 2022.

    In parallel with his academic career, James worked as a consultant on landscape projects around the world, often using these to translate his research into practice and policy.  He was one of the two lead planting designers at the London Olympic Park (2007-14), following the publication of “The Dynamic Landscape” (2004) a seminal text on the application of nature-like planting to the urban realm. 

    After 2010 he focused on projects in China, often in collaboration with Chinese Government agencies to advance the use of local native species in large scale nature-like design projects, involving more than 50 visits/expeditions.

    Post his retirement James has been engaged in design and management projects in the UK and internationally.   He continues to speak and write on landscape issues; the new version of the “Dynamic Landscape” will be published in summer 2025.

  • Tom Stuart-Smith is a landscape architect and garden designer whose work bridges naturalistic planting, ecological thinking and contemporary design. He initially studied zoology at the University of Cambridge before postgraduate studies in landscape design at Manchester University.

    Tom has designed gardens, parks and landscapes worldwide, with major public projects including RHS Garden Bridgewater, as well as  gardens at Chatsworth, the Hepworth Wakefield  and  Le Jardin Secret in Marrakech. Other recent UK projects include the rewilded walled garden at Knepp. Current projects include gardens for Tate Britain in London and the National Centre for Music in Edinburgh. Across his career, Tom has sought to reconcile cultural meaning with ecological richness.

    Tom has also developed his own evolving landscape, The Barn Garden in Hertfordshire, and he is co-founder of the Serge Hill Project for Gardening, Creativity and Health, a not-for-profit initiative that offers resources to local schools, charities and other groups who wish to learn about gardening and experience the benefits of connecting to nature.

    Tom is a Vice President of the Royal Horticultural Society and a Trustee of the Garden Museum. He was awarded an OBE in 2023 and named a Royal Designer for Industry in 2024.

  • Crowned “Best in Show” at RHS Chelsea in 2022 for Urquhart & Hunt’s ‘A Rewilding Britain Landscape’ (featuring foraged logs sculpted by beavers) Lulu Urquhart is a plants woman, geomancer, land listener, organic & biodynamic landscape designer and an earth-acupuncturist with a passion for traditional plant-lore, sacred land, reigniting of ancient ways and ecological restoration.

    With Adam Hunt, her design partner of 22 years, their work with ecological landscape design focuses on connecting with subtle earth energies and the ecology for re-establishing healthy biomes and using beauty in nature to enhance our human experience.

    Lulu has worked on over one hundred gardens across the UK and Globally. These gardens have been of varying sizes for both public and private clients. Of particular note are the estate of Woolsery on Exmoor, a regenerative farm estate celebrating syntropic farming and rewilding the soil as a base for deeply nutritious food systems; The Giardini Pistola in Puglia is a beautiful garden with a series of six terraced gardens; planted with a plethora of grasses, perennials, roses, fruit and trees - all drought and Xylella resistant plants; another is Cambridge city mosque, an eco-architectural phenomenon with a public sacred garden, full of the plant jewels inspired by the Ottoman, Persian and Islamic empires. U&H have worked on creating and designing several landscapes for well-known retreats and healing spaces, such as 42 Acres in Somerset, with a premise to listen the land; to encourage balancing and healing at the core, thus providing the most activating conditions for the strongest resonance for healing humans on that land too.

    In 2015 U&H co-founded the Tree Conference. A platform to unite information and priority for the trees; to create awareness and respect for their intelligence, sentience and place in managing our global climatic system and deep soil integrity.

    Their work currently takes them to an incredible landscape project in France, Ireland with Piet Oudolf and to India and the sacred lands of Tamil Nadu, and not least, much excitement and many collaborations close to home in Somerset.

    In their recent column in Homes & Gardens “Wild Prospects”, they colourfully informed readers about all the possibilities of ecological restoration in the garden setting.

  • Charlie Harpur is a plantsman and landscape designer. Having trained as an architect, he worked for the landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith for several years. Charlie then gained practical experience in horticulture and ecology at gardens including the Chelsea Physic Garden and Kew, graduating with a Kew Diploma in Horticulture before returning to Tom’s studio in a more horticultural role.

    Charlie is now Head Gardener at the Knepp Castle Estate where he oversees the rewilding of the Victorian walled garden, as well as the development of a new regenerative market garden.

  • Adam studied plant science for his BSc and then Plant Ecology for his MSc.  After working on land-based projects in London and then the West Country he set up his own landscape design studio (Urquhart and Hunt) with Lulu Urquhart in 2007. Projects he has worked on include the Hauser & Wirth Art Gallery in Somerset with Piet Oudolf the award winning Cambridge Mosque garden with Emma Clark, and the award winning Giardini Pistola in Puglia.

    A life-long naturalist he specialises in naturalistic planting and landscape restoration and recovery; in 2022 he and Lulu were invited to enter a re-wilding garden to the Chelsea Flower Show. The garden won a gold medal as well as the prestigious Best in Show award. Since then Adam has been working with others on several re-wilding projects in the West Country and further afield. He also writes an occasional column on wildlife gardening for Homes and Garden.

  • Isabella Tree is an award-winning writer and conservationist who lives with her husband, Charlie Burrell, in the middle of a pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex. She is author of six non-fiction books, including the 2018 Richard Jefferies Society Literature Award-winning book, Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British farm, that was voted in the top ten science books for 2018 by The Smithsonian. 

    Her recent book, co-authored with Charlie, The Book of Wilding - A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small, (Bloomsbury, 2023) has been described as ‘a handbook of hope’ and ‘a manual that builds hope for a better, wilder world’.  

    In 2020 Isabella was awarded a CIEEM Medal for her contribution to ecology and environmental management, and in 2021 received the Royal Geographical Society’s Ness Award. Isabella and Charlie were jointly awarded the Zoological Society of London’s Silver Medal ‘for outstanding contributions to the understanding and appreciation of zoology’ in 2023. 

    Her latest book is a children’s version of Wilding, illustrated by Angela Harding and published by PanMacmillan.

  • Dudley is an independent theatre and events producer, and a writer.  He produces under his own name, is co-founder of Simple8 Theatre Company, and is Producer of the Garden Museum Literary Festival. He has co-run Richard Darbourne Ltd, and has been Creative Producer at Curve Theatre and Festival Manager at the London International Mime Festival. Dudley has also co-written five plays, all performed in London.