Our inaugural Restoring Nature festival hosted by Ambios at Lower Sharpham Farm was in 2022, and now we are all set for Restoring Nature 2025
Same fantastic location, more fantastic authors encouraging discussion and debate, and a friendly convivial festival for like-minded people to get together and celebrate nature.

Restoring Nature 2025

Restoring Nature: a literary festival at Lower Sharpham Farm on Saturday 17th May 2025

The East Gate Bookshop and Ambios have teamed up again to host a one-day family-friendly festival at Lower Sharpham Farm. There will be talks, walks, books, authors, discussions, live music, a fully licensed bar and delicious locally sourced food.

How to get there

Address: Lower Sharpham Barton Farm, Ashprington TQ9 7DX

Please note parking at the farm is only available to Blue Badge holders and people speaking at and organising the festival.

Walk from Totnes:

Walk or cycle to the farm along the beautiful River Dart. It’s a 35-minute walk to Lower Sharpham Farm from Totnes. If you would like company, a group will be setting off from The Plains in Totnes by The Curator Café at 9:00am.

View the route map here

Bob the Bus:

Bob the Bus, part of the non-profit Totnes Community Bus Group will be running a shuttle service to and from the farm on the day. To get to the festival the service will depart from outside The Bull Inn on the Rotherfold and will run between 8:30 and 10 am, providing at least three opportunities to ride to the festival. For the return journey, from 5:30 pm, there will be two buses providing at least four opportunities to travel back to Totnes. Transport by Bob the Bus is included in the ticket price.

Meet the authors

We have brilliant authors speaking on the day; all bringing their own unique expertise, passion and experience to the festival, and we are looking forward to hearing all of them present on the day and contribute to our end-of-day panel discussion.

Poppy Okotcha
A Wilder Way: How Gardens Grow Us

A memoir of setting down roots; becoming embedded in nature, and of how tending to a patch of land will not only grow us as individuals but can also help to grow a better world.

In A Wilder Way, Poppy invites us to join her in her wild little garden in Devon, where, over the course of a year, she shares the inspiring, the mundane and the magical moments that arise from tending a garden through the seasons, and what they can teach us about living more sustainably. Woven throughout are folktales from her English and Nigerian heritage – stories with nature at their heart that have motivated her.

Bonnie Lander Johnson, Vanishing Landscapes: The Story of Plants and How We Lost Them

We once knew the landscape and the plants around us as well as we knew ourselves. But today our relationship with plants and nature has grown distant. In Vanishing Landscapes Bonnie goes in search of the life and the people who are still connected to the land. She meets farmers in Ireland, wine makers in Yorkshire, cloth dyers in the Highlands and goes to the moorlands of Devon in search of medieval apple orchards and the old skills of cidermaking.

Bonnie is a Fellow and Associate Professor at Downing College, Cambridge, teaching early modern literature and history.

Guy Shrubsole, The Lie of the Land

Guy Shrubsole, the author of the bestselling Who Owns England and The Lost Rainforests of Britain

In his latest book, The Lie of the Land, bestselling author and environmental campaigner, Guy Shrubsole returns to the theme of land: its ownership and its access, and asks are the landowning elite effective custodians of the countryside as they claim, or are they leaving the rivers polluted, fenlands drained, and moorlands burned.

While calling out poor land management, Guy also offers hope as he relays the stories of those trying to help nature recover, from small-scale farmers to community groups and individuals.

Sophie Pavelle, To Have or To Hold : Nature's Hidden Relationships

Sophie investigates eight symbiotic relationships trying to survive the climate and biodiversity crises. To Have and to Hold explains why it has never been more vital for us to understand symbiosis. Symbiotic relationships regulate ecosystems, strengthen resilience and bind pivotal connections.

In our relationship with the natural world, are we the parasites? Will we continue to exploit nature’s resources? Or will we vow to love and cherish what remains – shaping a more restorative life alongside nature?

Throughout the day, there will be a forest school at the festival to keep our younger ecologist entertained; and don’t miss Wild Birds Singing, a singing group for families held between 15:00 and 15:30 and led by the amazing Holly Ebony.

Once again we will have live music throughout the day, with details to follow soon…

It’s a beautiful walk above the river Dart from Totnes to Lower Sharpham Farm

The barn provides the perfect venue for author talks and enjoying locally sourced and freshly cooked food.

Chantal Lyons keeping the crowd enthralled with her brilliant talk about wild boar and her nook Groundbreakers at Restoring Nature 2024

There will be a fully licensed bar open from 1:00 pm

Tickets will be available from the East Gate Bookshop and online here
Adult ticket (over 18): £25.00 each
Under 18: £10.00 each
Tickets for under 5s are free of charge, but they will need a ticket

Please note: tickets will gain you entry to the festival and attendance to all the talks, but do not include food and drink. You are welcome to bring your own food to eat, or you can purchase the locally sourced and freshly cooked food that will be available at the festival.

So, save the date: Saturday 17th May for a brilliant day out in nature and on the farm.

Read our blog post looking back at Restoring Nature in 2024 here

Well behaved dogs, kept under control will be allowed into the festival site free of charge. We politely remind you that Lower Sharpham Farm is a working farm, and that dogs must not be allowed to roam freely and they must be under supervision at all times. Thank you for your cooperation.

What to expect on the day.

The day will be filled with talks, walks, books, authors, discussions, family activities and delicious locally sourced food.

Please aim to arrive at the farm between 9 and 10 am. The day begins with and a chance to grab breakfast and settling down for our first author at 10:30. Authors will read and present from inside the barn and there will be Q&A sessions and book signing after each talk to give people a chance to find out more.

The day will be split with two authors before and two after lunch. Lunch will be served in the barn at 1:00pm,

And for children, we have forest school activities throughout the day. Around 4:30pm, after the fourth author, the barbeque will have been lit ahead of a lively panel discussion, providing stimulating chat around the festival’s themes. After which there will be time to relax and chat at our fully licensed bar. The late evening light over the river Dart is a beautiful sight and will provide a fitting end to the day.

  • Make your way to the farm between 9:15 and 10 in time for a quick breakfast and our first author.

    The forest school area will be open from 10:00 with fully qualified forest schol leaders in attendence.

    At 12:00, our second author will take the stage taking us into lunch at 13:00

  • We will break for a lite lunch (leaving room for the evening BBQ) at 13:00, which will be served in the barn.
    The break will be an hour giving people chance to relax and explore parts of the farm,

    For those wanting to quench their thirst, the fully licensed bar will open at lunch.

  • at 14:00 our third author will be take the stage and after a short break will be followed by our final speaker at 15:30

  • Our BBQ will be lit – there will be vegetarian options and food will be still available after the discussion panel and into the evening, so there is no need to hurry.

    After all these fantastic author have shared their stories with us, from 17:00 we will gather them all together for a panel discussion to discuss and debate many of the topics, ambitions and visions they have for the future of wildlife. This will be a great platform for finding common ground and develop a strong voice and narrative around one of the most important issues facing us: land management and it’s part in mitigating recent catestrophic biodiversity loss and the effects of climate change.

    After our panel discuss ends around 18:00 the bar will still be open taking us to the end of the day and (hopefully) a glorious sunset over the River Dart.

Last light and a fond farewell over the river Dart