Bernd Brunner - Taming Fruit: How Orchards Have Transformed the Land, Offered Sanctuary, and Inspired Creativity

PRAISE FORTaming Fruit

A beautiful exploration of the life-giving bonds between trees, fruits, and people. Brunner is an astute guide to the fascinating reciprocal relationships between orchards and human culture.

DAVID GEORGE HASKELL , author of Pulitzer finalist The Forest Unseen and Burroughs Medal winner The Songs of Trees

An enchanting journey through the world of orchards and botanical curiosities. Beautifully illustrated and written with infectious and cultured enthusiasm, anyone who is even a tentative gardener will cherish this lovely book.

BRIAN FAGAN , author of The Little Ice Age and The Intimate Bond

This rich combination of glorious illustrations with cultural history, botany, anthropology, and personal anecdote will enthrall and delight anyone curious about the origins of orchards and the fruit they bear.

HELENA ATTLEE , author of The Land Where Lemons Grow

Fruit was there at the beginning of the human story, Bernd Brunner argues in this crisply written and lushly illustrated book, and its been with us ever sincein birth and death, peace and war, art and myth, science and religion.

ZACH ST. GEORGE , author of The Journeys of Trees

From American cider orchards to Mediterranean citrus groves, this beautifully illustrated book is an enticing insight into the world of fruit trees. Brunners eloquent and engaging account reminds us that the magic of the orchard extends far beyond its fruit.

LEIF BERSWEDEN , author of The Orchid Hunter

A beautifully illustrated journey through different lands and times, Bernd Brunners Taming Fruit enlightens us on the deep and winding history of how humans have used fruits and capitalized upon their sweetness and delight for our palates!

NEZKA PFEIFER , museum curator, Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum, Missouri Botanical Garden

Bernd Brunners fantastic book opens our eyes for the orchard as a way of life in which nature and culture coexist. Im now dreaming of the world as one gigantic orchard, teeming with life.

CHRISTIAN SCHWGERL , award-winning environmental journalist and author of The Anthropocene

Taming Fruits fascinating tales, paired with gorgeous historical art, are potent lessons in cultivation that we can imitate todayfor sustainability, freshness, and the joy of eating ones own peach or olive.

ERICA GIES , environmental journalist

Also by Bernd Brunner

Winterlust: Finding Beauty in the Fiercest Season

Birdmania: A Remarkable Passion for Birds

Copyright 2021 by Bernd Brunner

This text was originally written in German

English translation copyright 2021 by Lori Lantz

Illustrations copyright as credited

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Greystone Books Ltd.

greystonebooks.com

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-1-77164-407-5 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-77164-408-2 (epub)

Editing by Jane Billinghurst

Copy editing by Jess Shulman

Proofreading by Jennifer Stewart

Cover design by Belle Wuthrich and Jessica Sullivan

Text design by Belle Wuthrich

Front cover images: bird from mamita / Shutterstock; trees and fruit from Adolphe Philippe Millot, Nouveau Larousse Illustr (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1933); peach from Charles Mason Hovey, The Fruits of America (New York: D. Appleton, 1853)

Greystone Books gratefully acknowledges the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples on whose land our office is located.

Greystone Books thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada for our publishing activities.

Contents

vii

When the Dutchman Pieter Hermansz Verelst painted this young lady in the seventeenth century, it was fashionable to pose with fruit.

Prologue The Seeds for This Book

ACCORDING TO HENRY DAVID THOREAU, When man migrates he carries with him not only his birds, quadrupeds, insects, vegetables, and his very sword, but his orchard also. Efforts to cultivate fruit trees have historically connected regions and continentsand continue to do so today. As a result, they involve the interplay of time periods, landscapes, and nations. This book provides an overview of the different types of orchards that have existed throughout history and the principles by which they were organized. After all, the form that an orchard takes reflects the conditions of the time in which it was created. I will also endeavor to paint a picture of the life and work that took place among the trees, along with the thoughts that they inspired.

Places where various plants (and trees) are grown are often divided into two categories: ornamental spaces that fulfill an aesthetic purpose and productive spaces where the emphasis is on the harvest. In this way of seeing, ornamental gardens are works of art, while those where luminous fruit swells beneath the canopy of leaves are the products of labor. Is this really the case? Cant an orchardat least one not cultivated on an industrial scalebe beautiful? In this book, we will discover gardens and orchards that blur the lines between these supposedly clear categories. After all, many ways exist to shape these spaces: the interplay of light and shadow, paths that unfurl before the wanderer, places to sit, perhaps a little hut offering shelter from sudden rain, a swing.

But no matter how well designed, how much care is lavished on it, or how productive it might be, an orchard is by nature impermanent, even though it may exist near a human settlement for decades or more. As soon as fashions change, food is sourced from elsewhere, or the owners move away and no one feels responsible, other plants begin to take over. Eventually, all signs of the orchard disappear. But even when lost orchards no longer appear on any map, they did exist. They have a history.

Perhaps it makes sense to think about an orchard as a kind of stageone where a highly specific drama plays out between fruit trees and their caretakers, whoever they may be. Viewed in this way, orchards invite us to enjoy the complex spectacle of fruit growing and ripening in the company of animals, people, and other plants.