It’s early morning in late summer, and I’m with turtle dove expert Mark Nowers of the RSPB. We’re sitting in a wild field margin at Braxted Hall estate, location for wilding and nature recovery through Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), and site for the rare turtle dove. In the UK, there were 135,000 pairs in the 1960s, today just 2000. Just recently, he watched a pair on the hill behind us, purring at four in the morning. “We come offering solutions,” says Mark. They stitch the nature jigsaw together across multiple farms. His role: “Visit a landowner, listen to their story.” Farm clusters have been a great innovation, allowing farmers to develop social capital and trust, and so speeding nature recovery.

And soon, the excitement and inspiration of returning rare birds, rare arable plants, and ghost ponds. There are 17,000 ghost ponds across Essex. Most have gone or are abandoned. After the pod, we stand in a ghost pond, a circle of wet soil and wild plants in a field of barley.

“The landscapes are covered with buried jewels of ghost ponds,” says Mark. And such restoration can happen quickly.

His book recommendation: Oliver Rackham’s History of the Countryside.

His hero: Carl Sayer, professor at UCL, and pond restoration expert.

He recommends: do something on your territory, don’t use chemicals, plant a fruit tree, put up a swift box.

Web link: https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/turtle-dove

Operation Turtle Dove: https://www.operationturtledove.org/

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."

In the walled garden at Braxted Hall Estate, Duncan Clark talks about 30 years of rewilding of the family farm, and how it is beginning to connect up with other efforts across the landscapes of Essex. He describes developing multiple strands of business, including as a wedding venue. Farming has benefitted hugely from public support for the transition to sustainability and nature restoration. Now the new mechanism of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is bringing money from developers to the land: developers must offset nature losses by creating more, either nearby or further away on farms. Braxted Hall is being transformed by Duncan’s vision for a different kind of landscape. Maybe one day, he says, there will be a rewilded landscape from Clacton on the coast to the ancient forest at Epping on the outskirts of London.

He says, the more you build nature, the more you recover.

Duncan celebrates the work of the North Essex Farm cluster (40 farmers on 20,000 hectares), a recent example of the creation of social capital to increase trust, reciprocity and collective action by farmers. Facilitated by Emma and Joe Gray at Great Priory Farm, it is spreading ideas about regenerative agriculture too – you can have the food, and you can have the nature and carbon sequestration.

Duncan is proud that when he was told to grub up his 20 years of nature recovery, he didn’t.

His hero is Somali-born writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Duncan says about nature and people, “I’m a great lover of harmony.” His recommendation, “treat thy neighbour like thyself.”

For more on Braxted Hall, see https://www.braxtedpark.co.uk

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."

We’re sitting on the banks of the River Stour in “Constable Country.” It’s the home territory of the painter 250 years after his birth. Susan Owens is acclaimed author, art historian and curator: her most recent book is “Constable’s Year.” She was curator of paintings at the V&A Museum, and told on arrival she’d have to take on John Constable. What she found was a painter brave enough to invent a new attentiveness to the patterns of both nature and the working environments of the countryside: in fields, on the river, by the mills. He broke rules, established new norms, resisted family pressure, and stuck to his methods in the face of institutional gatekeepers on how best to paint. Says Susan, “There’s a steely determination at Constable’s heart.”

John Constable had said, “I’m going to study nature,” and that “My art is to be found in every and in every hedge.”

His approach: always to adjust and change over time, always to create improvements. Always too to face down the pressure to conform.

Susan’s hero is author, Ronald Blythe, who lived upstream of our recording location at Flatford. He too was rooted in nature and place.

She recommends his final book, Next to Nature.

She recommends we all show attentiveness. Notice what is happening. Draw if you have the time, this is the way to approach the nature and climate crises.

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."