Dr Canton’s own rewilding adventure started 20 years ago, when he moved from London to a cottage in the Essex countryside and noticed a two-acre field behind.
“I knew that two-acre patch of earth held more potential – as a place for nature to return and flourish,” he said.
Renaturing charts the journey he took, over a number of years, to rewild the field, digging a pond, forging meadowlands, creating habitats for birds and insects, and
encouraging flowers and plants that support pollinators and wildlife.
“Eventually what was once just a grassy space was again buzzing with life,” he added.
It was a project that inspired Dr Canton to re-think the term rewilding: “Rewilding is about bringing a large landscape back to a natural, self-sustaining state. But that isn’t possible on the scale of a field, a garden or a window box. What if we aimed for ‘renaturing’ instead?
“Even on the smallest of scales we can create habitats to support a greater diversity of nature. A single window box planted with pollinator-friendly flowers can provide a mini-habitat to support honeybees; a tower block with a window box on every balcony becomes an acre of bee-friendly ecosystem.”
Renaturing: Small Ways to Wild the World, published by Canongate, shows how the concept of rewilding can be adopted by everyone.