Orchard: A Year in England's Eden

   

    The English orchard which Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates have studied through the seasons over the course of several years and describe in such eloquent detail in their book Orchard: A Year in England's Eden is in effect a portal to the past, allowing them to experience the natural world their (great-)grandparents would have known, decades ago.

    Run organically and managed with the lightest and most sensitive of hands, the orchard is one of few such environments to survive in an age of tightly controlled and chemically-dependent farming and food production, but its owners' approach has led to its achieving an extraordinary ecological balance with a place for everything - or every creature, you might say - and everything in its place.

    A landscape literally "singing with life", the orchard's habitat supports a rich variety of insects, birds and mammals, and effects a natural regulation which allows it to be productive - its apples and pears become cider and perry - while performing a vital function of conservation.

    That such important parcels of land have been lost at such a rate in the name of 'progress' in recent years is a disturbing thought with which we are becoming all too familiar, but books such as this one and James Rebanks's English Pastoral remind us that there where there's a will, there's a way, and even small changes to the way we manage our gardens, parks, and farmland can have far-reaching effects.

    Orchard, as with English Pastoral and Dara McAnulty's Diary, opens the reader's eyes and ears to what's around them, fostering a habit of observing, learning, and understanding how the natural world works and how we might help it.

    I'll leave you with the book's final paragraph:

    "It's late afternoon on New Year's Eve. An eerie hush blankets the orchard. The snow has locked the apples away. Sad and mute, once-warring thrushes cluster in the hedgerows as the fading light turns them to grumpy, huddled shapes. The old apples lean, it seems, a little more than at the month's beginning; their outstretched forms pleading in silence. Below the furrowed tentacles of pears, a tidy rank of new trees lies carefully planted. These tiny pioneers stand bolt upright: young cadets, frozen in a never-ending salute to their elders. The deep blue dims and the old trees fade. As the moon silvers the orchard's wrinkled skin, only fierce orchard robins will sing for this vanishing world."

Comments

[Dark Puss]

"... allowing them to experience the natural world their (great-)grandparents would have known, decades ago."

Well perhaps but do remember that a range of toxic chemicals were used by our orchard loving grandparents to control blight, lichen growth, moth larvae (Lead arsenate (PbHAsO4) was first used in apple orchards in the 1890's to control codling moth) etc. and that it was absolutely a given that flocks of bullfinches would be mercilessly shot (my mother certainly witnessed this) on sight when seeking the buds of apples etc. I do hope this book paints a realistic picture of pre-WW2 orchards as well as acknowledging how much has been lost.

Removing lead and arsenic from the contaminated soil of old orchards is a surprisingly common requirement!

[Cornflower]

Yes indeed, 'old' methods are not necessarily 'best' methods, and the book certainly mentions the bullfinches as you describe. The broader point is, as we're nowadays familiar with in the context of meadows and traditional hedgerows, for instance, how modern farming and land management methods have on the whole contributed to loss of habitat and loss of species. The other side of the coin is of course the need to grow sufficient (affordable) food and provide farmers with a living, and there is a difficult balance to be struck.