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Lovely shots, but are we really getting colder winters? Colder as opposed to when exactly? Are we not technically still coming out of an ice age?

I run 2 meadows in Germany with old fruit trees on them for more then 20 years now. I started to mow with a bar mower and took the grass to the edges, then this was to much work and now I use a mulching mower which cuts the grass in small pieces. I mow one or two times a year, and if I do not mow then I will have a lot of trees coming up. And I can tell you that the vegetation changed almost every year, depending on how and how often I did mow. At one point I had some plants about 1,80 m high and dense and after some mowing they disapeared and now there is grass again. I always have thisles that appear every year at different places and I see small trees every few meters: apples, cherries, plums and even oak and other forest trees from the near forests. Have fun with your meadows, but be aware that a lot is decided by nature and not by yourself.

I personally would remove all the sycamore as they decimate so many native woodlands and hedgerows. Otherwise unchecked in the future they will take over take and out compete

Excellent. The late John Seymour would be doing cartwheels.

If you're interested in biodiversity, you may look into doing a Miyawaki forest (

Great video, definitely going to watching your progress.

Interesting project you and your family have taken on. It does not sound like you’re planning on using any animals to help with the habitat creation? Also i was wondering why you said trees can’t be planted now? I always understood autumn to be a great time to source and plant bare root trees.

Is that private land or publicly accessible?

Fair play to you, you are very knowledgeable and have a lot of common sense which is sadly lacking among those with good intentions but little to no education on the subject. Many don't consider things like planting local ecotypes, sediment pollution in waterways etc.

I agree concerning your bees. You could borrow a hive of honeybees for a while if needed. They can make you good money. I personally do not like it when they feed them sugar water as they should use their own honey. Good luckbwith this project. I have subscibed.

Great video, and I'm very excited to follow your progress. I'm doing something similar myself. Just one thing though....you can plant trees well before the New Year. In fact I plant trees all year round although the best chance of success seems to be once they stop growing in the late autumn. So from now onwards I'm very much planting a lot of trees. Also, if you want to dry out your wet field - alders do an amazing job - and quickly.

This is a great plan! You really looked into this quite well. I’d recommend managing vegetation along the riverbanks to help preserve the nesting habitat for Sand Martins-it’s challenging, but it would make a big difference, as these birds are a real charm to have around. This could also benefit Kingfishers. I’d suggest adding deadwood around the river, like upright deadwood poles, to support their feeding behavior. This can also help young Sand Martins when they’re fledging. For the pond area, consider creating a wildflower meadow or planting a variety of native plants nearby. With Sand Martins around, this would provide a great food source and support local biodiversity for example trout or other fishes in the river to support the food chain. When you do the pond I would highly suggest within the pond floor itself, try using different materials like various sizes of gravel (good for breeding fishes) and a mix of soil and silt to create a more diverse habitat, which would support a greater range of species. For the forestry work, I agree with avoiding Ash and Sapmore trees. Just a note on Sapmore: they can be invasive and may outcompete native species. In the UK, we have to monitor Sapmore’s spread carefully to ensure balanced regeneration, though this might differ in Ireland. Log piles are a great idea! I’d also recommend creating standing deadwood, as it supports a variety of niches and different moisture levels, benefiting diverse species. When working on woodland areas, consider establishing mixed canopy layers to support a range of birds and invertebrates, and encourage natural regeneration as much as possible-it’s often the best approach to creating a sustainable woodland. This is what I recommend-please double-check, as you don’t have to do all of this! I hope it helps, and I wish you the best of luck with your project! Links that might be helpful: • Conservation Evidence: Though it’s global, it offers valuable insights on habitat management. www.conservationevidence.com/ • Woodland Toolkit (UK-based): Some resources may be specific to the UK and I don’t think it’ll help much but could be useful for you. I know people used this for forward planning for woodland creation and planting for example adding rides/ tracks early to avoid less hassle in the future. woodlandwildlifetoolkit.sylva.org.uk/assess

For those who are more familiar with hectares, 5 acres = 2 hectares = 20,000 sq. metres.

I’m not sure how much experience you have with vegetable gardening but an invaluable resource I found about 2 years ago and wish I had have found when I was starting out is a channel called Steve’s Seaside Kitchen Garden and Allotment, he’s from Blackpool so has a fairly similar climate to ours in Ireland and he has made this amazing database online regarding successions: when to sow seeds, when to plant and when to expect a harvest to ensure a constant supply of whatever you wish to grow. He also has great information on designing your garden, such as making all beds the same size so you can move Coldframe tops etc to whatever bed they are needed on for example and also great guides on how to build stuff such as cold frame tops and butterfly nets for brassicas

Before your fields were unwilded they wouldn’t have been flat or contained no large stones, please put in some mounds of soil, dig a few 1 meter square divots (so not all the land drains at the same speed) and plant some stoney outcrops for different critters and plants to live in. That’s my suggestion. 👍👍😁😁

Go raibh mile maith agat!💚

Get yourself some beaver

Just on what you said about not putting up more than one barn owl box. We put up two boxes on our farm, one is used to nest in, and the other is used by the adults when the chicks become a month or so old. The adults only come back to feed them at that stage.

Just know I'm going to be obsessed with this channel already. 🙌🏼

Your plans for this land are spot on. Feeding your family & making room for nature just ticks all the boxes as a landowner. I think you have covered most of the criteria needed for a project of this kind. When you choose your trees for planting, try and include Hornbeam for its beauty, Alder to attract siskins & linnets and Alder buckthorn for egg laying options to butterflies. These three trees love wet, heavy soils. I am looking forward to the journey, the very best of luck.👍

If you were depending your livelyhood on farming you would not be rewilding this farm .

We have done this. 6 years later it's coming together

Seen these moths all over Dollymount dunes a few years ago. Also near Howth towards Burrow beach.

Hey, I'm from Dublin and in my late thirties. I've been dreaming about doing something similar to this for years. I've recently found out i'm about to become a father. This has given me even more of an impetus to change how I live and where I live. Central Wicklow and Meath around the Boyne valley are where i'm looking. I'm also looking for more than 5 acres. Maybe 15-25. Thank you so much for documenting this adventure. It's so interesting to me and lots of people around the world. You're very lucky to be living the dream. I wish you and your family the very best.

This is great to see and I am looking forward to learning more. Best Wishes

Wish we could jump forward 10 years to see how amazing this will be!

I really enjoyed this, which i stumbled across when searching for antidotes to the misery unfolding in Palestine. I was particularly interested in the Yellow Rattle, though I don't know if it would thrive where i am (fairly high altitude, thin, dry acid soil, Wicklow mountain area) Wish I had a river ! Have quite a bit of bog - which i love - plus a little stream which mostly dries up in the summer months. Of course, there are many deer - for me, their grace and beauty far outweigh any 'problems'; the truth is that humans are the greatest threat to biodiversity : thousands of acres of Sitka spruce ,for a start ! Fencing, or individual tree-guards, work most of the time. good luck with the work !!

I can't agree with your reasoning not to plant ash. Plant as many as you can. 99% may die, but the 1% will be the progenitors of future generations. Those that don't make it to full maturity will still support biodiversity by giving nesting sites for birds like woodpeckers and food for beetles and fungi and a myriad of other species that depend on decay.

Want to see more people rewilding land in Ireland? Check out this video: ruclips.net/video/0WmtqIVcHw8/видео.html

Such an exciting project! I left Ireland to practice and teach regenerative agriculture and plant food forests in Spain, but I do maintain a keen interest in what's happening there. Best of luck, and if I can help in any way, feel free to shoot me a DM.

Have a mini version of this, great to see others on board in Ireland, gives me hope! Absolute pleasure to watch my trees develop through the seasons and my pond mature. That river and bank are fantastic to have on your land!

Could be good to ringbark some of the sycamores at woodland edges to create snags. I think it may encourage barn owls as they could use the dead branches as hunting perches (along with other birds of prey and flycatchers). Or you could just ringbark individual branches if you don't want to kill the whole tree. Some other microhabitats I can think of that would be relatively easy to create would be tree scrapes, coppiced trees, snapped branches, partially buried logs, and wet and dry areas of bare earth on the meadows.

Awesome! Excitied to see this develop.

Amazing looking property. Such potential. You should have a permaculture consultant at least do a walk around and just make sure your plans are not causing erosion events or you are not putting infrastructure in an area that may flood. Can put you in contact. 👍

It`s really great that you are helping nature recover. I look forward to seeing what happens. Thanks for sharing.

Brilliant stuff 🙌🏼 I’ll be watching and learning all the way hoping to do something similar myself, best of luck ✊🏻

Every small and big river that goes to the coast in Wicklow or joins another that does, good chance it has sea trout and maybe salmon late in the season. Every river in Wicklow has some sea trout. That looks like a spawning stream. At the very least, you'll have brown trout, eels, minnow. Keep an eye out from now on for brown trout redds and from early November on for sea trout. Salmon mid-December on. You might be surprised. They'll turn up in very small streams

Try and make sure you don't shade your meadow by planting your trees to the north side of the plot. I have found that Yellow rattle can struggle sometimes controlling Yorkshire fog👍

Amazing , good luck with it !

Really excited for the wild flower meadow and wet lands! Great rewilding plans you’ve got

Also pond by the river, the water table will be higher

Bless ya mate, good luck with it

Wonderful I learn so much listening to your plans look forward to the next one

Great plans 👍🏻 I do native wildflower meadows professionally so in terms of the first field you need to remove the grass and expose the soil otherwise the yellow rattle wont take due to thick layer of dense grass that fall over the years. If you don’t want to bring heavy machinery scythe it down and use chain harrow behind quad bike. The germination rate will be much improved. Not sure what way you want to build the pond I use rubber liner but if you don’t want to use liner dig test hole about 1m deep (or whatever depth you want the pond be) and check water table. If sufficiently high and yo have clay soil you might get away with minidigger compacting the walls. The pond itself doesn’t need to be too deep so make sure you have lots of shallow margins, thats the most important habitat for majority aquatic life.

Get acorns right now from your local ancient woodland - pot them up then plant them out in 2 years when tall enough to compete with long grass. .

Looking forward to seeing how this progresses

Great plans!

"The lawn look has got to go!" I heard that! My husband removed our small front grass area and replaced it with native plants and the invertebrate biodiversity is crazy in the first 6 months 😊 taking out the lawn in the back in sections and now there's all sorts of moths,butterflies, dragon flys, and birds. There is hope for us😊 from an American of proud Irish decent.

Great to see you guys doing this, there is so much life out there thats for sure. I think the most important thing is water. provide the water the rest will follow along. keep up the good work. sub added.