It was only as we began to realize how broken the system was that we were able to listen.

And I think the person who really began to make us see the land in a completely different way was Ted Green.

The authority on ancient oak trees.

He grew up very feral as a child.

It's almost like he's symbiotically connected with trees.

He's a mycorrhizal fungi in himself.

In fact, he doesn't wash because he feels that, you know, that's a terrible thing to do, that we all moving bacteria and fungi spores.

And he thinks totally differently.

Ted came to advise us on our oak trees at Knepp.

There was just something not right about them.

And what he saw there really appalled him.

Everywhere I look was a sea of wheat.

And I thought, oh, they're killing them.

They're going to die.

He said, you know, the roots of these trees extend ten, 15m out beyond the canopy on the kind of every oak Every oak you can see in the landscape, theyre all connected by these microscopic filaments, mycorrhizal fungi going through the soil, collecting the minerals and nutrients.

These are very, very fine strands, like cotton wool.

What he described was this fizzing chemical circuit board underneath your feet.

The life support system that sustains pretty much all plants on the planet.

♪ Plants and trees can actually talk to each other, communicate about disease, about attack from pests and insects, about being browsed by animals.

I mean, some people say that mycorrhizal fungi can extend over continents.

They extend for hundreds and hundreds of miles in a system that hasnt been disturbed.

And so we were chopping through that every year and spraying the soil and mycorrhizal fungi with fungicides.

It was us destroying the whole survival system that trees depend on.

The soil eventually becomes dirt, empty of organic life.

And then it requires artificial fertilizer in order to grow anything in it at all.

A young couple, two children, farmers, big acreage.

And to come out here with them and show them trees like this and watch them see the tree differently.

And they got it in one.

And I walked away.

When I went home, I thought, they're going to do something.

Something will happen.