Listening to the Land

I tried to begin with a theory, about what a 2.5-acre field should become.

But when I am standing in it — when I am with it — theory falls away.

The land is not a concept or a project. It is not even really a noun. It is living – a myriad of process, of verbs cascading into one another. A living procession of growth and decay, disturbance and repair, death and renewal.

I want it to thrive. I want it to be strong and resilient enough to withstand whatever climate and circumstance may bring.

I took on management of the field in early 2024. It had been sheep pasture — tidy, grazed and simplified. My first instinct was to reinstate hedges, because that is what I grew up with: fields edged by living boundaries. Hedges are more than dividers. They are windbreaks, wildlife corridors and shelter belts for wrens, voles and ladybirds. Putting them back felt like restoring both habitat and memory.

From there, the work became less a plan and more a mosaic, a tapestry of micro-habitats. In January 2025, a seven-by-seven-metre pond went in. Micro-woods followed: silver birch, rowan, crab apple and guelder rose. Near an old crab apple — now a scratched and scoured tangle of branches, its fruiting sparse — I planted home-grafted and local apple varieties, companions for a veteran tree.

A small patch of potatoes marked our first step towards growing food. The rabbits (or hares) promptly dug them up and nibbled them. It was an early lesson: food production in a biodiverse landscape is tough.

Around the pond, garden orphans found a home — geranium, astrantia and comfrey — alongside annual wildflowers and a green manure sowing of phacelia. Nothing was rigidly designed. It was observation, experiment and adjustment. Listening with all senses.

Advice has been plentiful. Use glyphosate before planting trees, or the grass will stunt them. Keep pasture as pasture; trees reduce its value. Or alternatively, plant the whole field as orchard. Or woodland. Each suggestion carries certainty.

But living systems do not thrive under a tight fist of expectation or control. They grow and breathe as complexity deepens, and the ‘ruling hand’ lets each facet have a voice.

Some of the most hopeful signs have come from what might be labelled mistakes. Where grass was left long, it became a vole’s paradise. Those voles, in turn, drew in a barn owl. We responded by installing a nest box in the one mature tree on the field — a sycamore once laid as hedge, now a queenly, partially hollowed presence with a few dead limbs stretching skyward.

This year, beneath that long grass, I discovered young oak seedlings. Likely carried as acorns by jays or small mammals from a distant tree, then forgotten. The land is not waiting for my design; it is participating in its own.

The pond quickly attracted frogs. Soon after, a heron began making regular fly-bys, prompting me to add more stones and cover to protect amphibians. Hares treat newly planted flowers as a breakfast bar, particularly favouring daisy roots. Rabbit burrows undermine young trees. The dog has removed a few from the system. I have learned, via YouTube, how to prepare rabbit for the slow cooker with cider.

What is emerging is not a finished landscape but the beginning of a web of relationships: acorn arrives in field, oak tree grows; grass hides vole, vole hides acorn, owl predates on vole; pond attracts frog, frog attracts heron. Diversity invites complexity. Complexity builds resilience.

For those of us thinking about climate adaptation and biodiversity at a local level, this small field offers wisdom. We do not need grand masterplans to begin. We can plant hedges. Dig ponds. Cluster trees. Leave some areas. Observe what arrives, then respond.

A healthy relationship includes listening. It means loosening control, paying attention and adjusting dynamically. The land is not static ground beneath our feet. It is alive — and in relationship with it, we are learning too.