Smaller-Scale Rewilding: A SHORTER Guide to Bringing Nature Back, Wherever You Are

Don’t let size limit your ambition! Learn how smaller-scale rewilding can make a big impact on local biodiversity. Get started today with our SHORT practical guide.

Many of you told us how much you loved our full guide to smaller-scale rewilding which we have been serialising the last few months. You also told us that you would love to have a small, pocket sized version for you to cherish, share and use out there rewilding your garden! Here it is.

Introduction: Why Small Really Matters

For decades, rewilding has been associated with big landscapes - Yellowstone’s wolves, Knepp Estate in England, or key projects in the Scottish Highlands. These projects capture imagination because they demonstrate the breathtaking power of nature when given room to recover. But there’s a common misconception here: that rewilding is only possible on a grand scale, requiring thousands of acres, deep pockets, and years of planning.

This is where smaller-scale rewilding comes in. Defined here as rewilding on plots under 250 acres - and often much smaller - this approach recognises that biodiversity recovery can, and must, happen everywhere: in gardens, school grounds, road verges, farms, and even balconies.

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Why? Because most of us don’t live next to vast wildernesses. We live in cities, towns, villages, or farmland-dominated regions. If rewilding is to succeed as a global movement, it has to be practical and local - a patchwork of many small wild spaces that, together, stitch back the web of life.

The rewilding web of life

This is the vision behind LettsSafari, pioneers of smaller-scale rewilding. Through their projects, writing, and subscription community, they demonstrate that ecological restoration can be democratic: something everyone can take part in, no matter how much land (or balcony space) they own.

This article (taken from our full guide to smaller-scale rewilding) explores how smaller-scale rewilding works, what habitats you can create, which plants and animals make it thrive, and how LettsSafari’s approach can inspire a mass-market movement of everyday rewilders.

What Is Smaller-Scale Rewilding?

At its simplest, rewilding means stepping back and letting nature lead. It’s about reducing control, embracing messiness, and trusting that natural processes - growth, predation, decay, succession - will shape healthier ecosystems than we can design.

Size doesn't matter - it's combined scale that counts!

Smaller-scale rewilding applies these ideas to projects under 250 acres. That might include:

• A suburban garden left partly unmown, buzzing with bees.

• A corner of farmland turned to scrub for nesting birds.

• A community park with a wildflower meadow instead of mown grass.

• An allotment pond full of newts and dragonflies.

• A city development with rain gardens and native trees woven in.

The scale doesn’t matter. What matters is the principle: creating spaces where nature can breathe. Even tiny projects provide stepping-stones for wildlife across landscapes. In urban areas, these become lifelines for pollinators and birds, connecting isolated green patches into a larger web.

And there’s another benefit: smaller projects are often more personal, visible, and inspiring. A wild corner in your garden or a scruffy hedgerow in a park isn’t abstract conservation - it’s something you see and feel every day. That direct connection can spark bigger change.

Why Smaller-Scale Rewilding Works

1. Biodiversity at the Edges
   Ecologists have long observed that edges - the margins between habitats - host the richest variety of species. Smaller-scale rewilding naturally creates many such edges: where grass meets scrub, water meets woodland, hedge meets field.

2. Local Species First
   Small projects thrive when planted with native species adapted to local soil and climate. These are easier to grow, more resilient, and instantly useful to local wildlife.

3. Messiness Is Habitat
   Where traditional gardening tidies away dead wood, weeds, or fallen leaves, rewilding recognises their value. A log pile becomes a beetle hotel; a nettle patch is food for butterflies, and leaves bring nitrogen to the soil.

4. Scalability
   Smaller spaces are easier for individuals, schools, or councils to manage. One garden rewilding may seem insignificant, but multiplied by millions, they form an ecological revolution.

Where You Can Rewild: Practical Settings

1. Garden-Scale Rewilding

Your own garden, no matter how small, might be the easiest place to start. Key actions include:

• Lawn liberation: Stop mowing all or part of the lawn. Let grasses and wildflowers flower and set seed.

• Plant native shrubs and trees: Hawthorn, hazel, and dogwood feed birds and insects.

• Add water: Even a small pond or rain barrel attracts dragonflies, frogs, and birds.

• Let weeds be wildflowers: Clover, dandelion, and nettle are vital pollinator plants.

• Create messy zones: Log piles, compost heaps, or leaf litter nurture fungi and invertebrates.

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2. Municipal Parks and School Grounds

Here, rewilding is about shifting a part of your grounds from manicured lawns and annual bedding plants to semi-wild habitats:

• Wildflower meadows instead of short-mown fields.

• Ponds, rain gardens, and wetland edges.

• Native hedgerows rather than ornamental shrubs.

• Interpretive signs so the public understands why these “messy” areas matter.

3. Smallholdings and Allotments

Land used for food can also host biodiversity.

• Hedgerows and tree lines as wildlife corridors.

• Scrub and rough grass margins around plots.

• Natural pest control from encouraging frogs, bats, and ladybirds.

• Agroforestry systems combining trees, crops, and wild areas.

4. Urban Verges and Vacant Lots

• Roadside verges left unmown become pollinator highways.

• Empty plots seeded with wildflowers create instant mini-meadows.

• Rain gardens help manage stormwater while feeding biodiversity.

5. Corners of Farms

• Unproductive field edges can be left for scrub or woodland.

• Rewilded patches act as refuges for pollinators that spill into crops.

• Ditches, ponds, or shelterbelts improve soil, water, and biodiversity.

The Microhabitats of Smaller-Scale Rewilding

Small-scale projects succeed by mimicking the diversity of natural habitats. Even in a quarter-acre plot, you can host a range of microhabitats, each with distinct ecological roles.

Wild Grasslands

• How to create: Stop mowing, introduce native meadow seeds, mow once a year in September.

• Benefits: Nectar for pollinators, hunting ground for owls, carbon storage.

Scrubland

• How to create: Allow bramble, gorse, or hawthorn to spread; don’t over-manage.

• Benefits: Nesting cover for birds, berries for mammals, messy but vital.

Woodland

• How to create: Plant native trees in small clusters; let natural regeneration fill in.

• Benefits: Shade, soil improvement, fungi, and bird habitats.

Wetlands and Waterways

• How to create: Dig a pond, redirect rainwater, allow seasonal flooding.

• Benefits: Amphibians, dragonflies, water filtration, carbon storage.

Key Species: Plants, Trees, and Wildlife

Smaller-scale rewilding works best when it supports a self-sustaining web of life.

Plants and Trees

• Trees: Oak, birch, willow, hazel, hawthorn.

• Shrubs: Dog rose, blackthorn, elder.

• Wildflowers: Oxeye daisy, knapweed, scabious, marjoram.

• Grasses: Meadow foxtail, fescues, red clover.

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Wildlife

• Pollinators: Bees, hoverflies, butterflies, moths.

• Amphibians: Frogs, toads, newts.

• Birds: Sparrows, wrens, owls, kestrels.

• Mammals: Hedgehogs, bats, foxes (in rural/urban edges).

• Decomposers: Beetles, worms, fungi.