Change is coming to the land I’ve come to love in 15 years living on the edge of the Castle Howard estate. Across almost 9,000 acres of mixed agriculture, forestry and parkland, the clear felling is over, as is the estate pheasant shoot – empty pens stand ready for dismantlement. The least agriculturally productive acreages are to be unyoked from cultivation – large herbivores will manage what springs from the boggy soils and there are hopes, soon, of beavers. Elsewhere, farming is switching to regenerative methods and tree cover is set to increase through a mixture of natural regeneration and planting with stock grown from seed gathered by hand – a huge effort boosted by volunteers.
When I call into the estate’s tree nursery, Guy Thallon, the head of natural environment, is chatting to nurserymen Josh and Henry. They’ve been grading saplings for sale, but something is awry. “The rowans are all growing bent again,” says Josh. “They did it last year too.”
