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ORCHARD: A Year In England’s Eden
by Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates (Collins £20, 256pp)
Orchards truly are England’s little Edens: astonishing havens for wildlife, as well as sources of our world-famous apples and pears.
We have lost far too many in recent decades, neglected or grubbed out as ‘inefficient’.
Yet protecting their unmatched biodiversity is about the most long-sighted and eco-efficient thing we can do. They teem not only with blossoms and fruit, but also bees and woodpeckers, hoverflies and fungi, beetles and mistletoe.
Oh, and jays don’t ‘lose’ the acorns they bury in the autumn (5,000 acorns per jay). They’re planting them so they can harvest the young leaves in the spring as ‘fresh salad for their infants’. Animals were farming long before us. Magical.