Orchard cover art

Orchard

A Year in England’s Eden

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Orchard

By: Benedict Macdonald, Nicholas Gates
Narrated by: Mike Grady
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Only £0.99 a month for the first 3 months. Pay £0.99 for the first 3 months, and £8.99/month thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Start my membership

About this listen

By the Wainwright-Conservation-Prize-winning author of Rebirding

Spend a year in an orchard, celebrating its imperilled, overlooked abundance of life.

England's ancient orchards, collaborations between people and nature, are sources of hope for the future. Protecting them promises a far richer England for the centuries to come, for wildlife and for us.

As the seasons turn, a wealth of animals and plants are revealed: Bumble and solitary bees apartment-hunting in April; spotted flycatchers migrating in May; redstarts, hedgehogs and owls nesting in June; an explosion of life in the summer and the harvest and homespun cider-making in the autumn. And all throughout the year, the orchard’s human and animal inhabitants work together, creating one of the richest ecosystems left in Britain.

Explore this unique habitat throughout the course of a year, and marvel at the beauty and strength of nature.

©2020 Benedict Macdonald, Nicholas Gates (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited Animals Biological Sciences Botany & Plants Ecosystems & Habitats Gardening & Horticulture Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Science Gardening Habitat

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Rebirding cover art
Cornerstones cover art
The Book of Wilding cover art
An Irish Nature Year cover art
Woodsman cover art
Wild Fell cover art
The Lost Rainforests of Britain cover art
Bringing Back the Beaver cover art
A Naturalist at Large cover art
Wonderland cover art
A Complete Guide to British Birds cover art
Birds, Beasts, and Bedlam cover art
Alien Worlds cover art
My Garden World cover art
The Nature of Oaks cover art
British Woodland cover art

Critic reviews

"Splendid." (Guardian)

"Visionary, illuminating and fascinating." (George Monbiot)

"You may not have come across Ben Macdonald before now; but believe me, you will hear a lot more from him in the future." (Stephen Moss)

All stars
Most relevant
Eye opening, beautiful read, historical nostalgic and then bringing us bang up to date with what we must do to protect our precious environment and the life it starves to protect..an orchard lost in time..thank goodness!!

A must read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A wonderful and very timely book.
Full of in-depth information both historical and contemporary.
A truly satisfying read.

Essential reading

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
found it easy on the ear jn fact so easy I sometimes dozed off. very educational

fascinating

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
As a lifelong lover of the natural world, I almost dread the prospect of reading yet another tale of doom and gloom regarding man's desecration of our beautiful planet. The description of this orchard is so touching but the fact that it seems to be an oasis in an ever encroaching green desert breaks my heart. I think there are some hopeful signs that some if us have woken up to this sad fact and are trying to make changes, but is it too little too late. Only time will tell.

beautiful but sad

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I learnt so much from this beautifully written and well organised book that I’m about to return to the beginning and start again to see what other gems of information I missed first time around, looking at every aspect of Orchard life, from the trees and the birds to the fungal network below the surface this book managed to be at once nostalgic, scientific and a call to arms in the face of climate change. I’ve been left with the urge to make a myriad of changes to how I look after my own (very much not orchard sized) patch of earth and with a list of things I want to research further, I cannot praise this book enough and would encourage everyone to read it! Plus it is excellently narrated by Mike Grady.

Utterly fascinating and very timely

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews