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

by Bernd Brunner, Lori Lantz (Translator)

A captivating cultural and scientific history of orchards, perfect for readers of Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire and Mark Kurlansky’s Salt

Throughout history, orchards have served many sacred purposes: they aresites of worship and rest, inspiration for artists and writers, and vibrant community hubs. Moreover, they are places of sustenance. In Taming Fruit, award-winning writer Bernd Brunner interweaves beautiful illustrations and prose to show that the story of orchards is a human story. It is also a story of how humans have shaped and bent nature according to our desires for millennia.

As Brunner tells, the first orchards may have been oases dotted with date trees, where desert nomads stopped to rest. In the Amazon, Indigenous tribes maintained mosaic gardens centuries before colonization. Modern fruit cultivation developed over thousands of years in the East and the West. As populations expanded, fruit trees sprang from the lush gardens of the wealthy and monasteries to fields and roadsides, changing landscapes as they fed the hungry.

But orchards are not only for growing fruit; they have also inspired great artists. Taming Fruit shares paintings, photographs, and illustrations alongside Brunner’s enchanting descriptions and research, offering a multifaceted––and long-awaited––portrait of the orchard.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Nature, Food, Gardening

304 pages, Hardcover

Published November 2, 2021

About the author

Bernd Brunner, a graduate of the Free University of Berlin and Berlin School of Economics, is an independent scholar, freelance writer, and editor of nonfiction books. He is the author of The Ocean at Home: An Illustrated History of the Aquarium. Lori Lantz received a Ph.D. in comparative literature from UCLA and attended the Free University of Berlin as a Fulbright Scholar.

Reviews

[Bernard Lavallée · Rating 4 out of 5]

The object in itself is of high quality with the thick paper and many illustrations, which is the reason I gave it 4 stars. If it was only for the text, it would be 3 or 3,5.

Even though the subject is very interesting and the author did a thorough research, it felt as though he wanted to plug as many orchard facts as possible, without much cohesion. I feel that just adding subtitles throughout the chapters would have made a world of difference in readability.

I still appreciated the bibliography which seems to contain a lot of important texts in this field. I will use this book as a starting point for further research on this subject.

[Carol McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very beautiful book. I found a few factual errors that for me, a trained horticulturalist, detracted from the book. Lots of wonderful descriptions of ancient gardens. Lots of interesting fruit facts.

[Matthew Burris · Rating 3 out of 5]

So much fruit and tree information! Needed some maps and the pre-Columbian North America section was less than a page so that was a bummer.

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The history of orchards of many kinds, from planting palms at oases and seeds along the Silk Road, to stately gardens, and industrial citrus and apple production.

There is no way to do this book justice in a review. The sheer number of tree species and orchards provided, the countries covered and landowners fine and humble, the workers pictured and art of the day reproduced in glorious colour. Tree and fruit and biodiversity lovers will find this a must-read. Art lovers can adore the illustrations. This is a book to get lost in for hours. Equally, a book to dip into so as to absorb a time and locale fully without getting it confused with the next chapter.

Dates, olives, figs, apples, pears, quinces, cherries, citrus of all kinds, medlars, breadfruits, peaches, apricots, nectarines, almonds, walnuts, hazels, pomegranates, persimmons, currants, plums, pluots, and more. No mention of greengages or damsons that I saw, but they are kinds of plum, and might be in an illustration.

Orchards are shown to provide far more amenities than crop fields, with shade, shelter from weather, firewood, birds, bats and bees, as well as scent and colour and beauty to delight the walker. Animals such as sheep can graze under the trees, though goats can climb so are not recommended, and pigs may dig near roots. Not mentioned, families with an old pony - for children, a pony trap or pulling a roller - could turn it out in the orchard, whereas a pasture would cause laminitis from the rich grass. We see some horses and donkeys, usually pulling carts full of apples or oranges.

Lovely, lovely book. A wealth of research. There's an index of people and places. References start p.261, further reading sources p.269, illustration credits p.273, index p.281.
I borrowed this book from the RDS Library. This is an unbiased review.

[Andrew (Drew) Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a 3 star book with an extra star for the wonderful illustrations. Besides the fact that the chapters just kind of end with no transition (including the very strange last 2 paragraphs of the epilogue), the content is too broad and unfocused. I would have liked either more than n the science of fruit cultivation and how it has developed over the centuries or a cultural exploration of the role orchards have played in the human imagination. The last couple chapters which offer snapshots of some unusual modern orchards were good. On the whole it gives little anecdotes of both and feels scattered.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

Confusing, rambling...yeah, humans like fruit and have for a very long time.
Not really sure what the point of the book was.

[anchi · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book with amazing illustrations - please do not get ebook because it's not that fun anymore... 3-star content and an extra 1/2 for the details.

[多余人-Lishnye Lyudi · Rating 3 out of 5]

“在地球上所有令人愉快的事物里，果园带来的快乐是最美好的、最顺应自然的……你的眼睛想看到的，耳朵想听到的，嘴巴想尝到的，鼻子想闻到的，哪一样在果园中不是取之不尽、种类繁多呢？”

[Apostrophe · Rating 5 out of 5]

great introductory read on pomology! fantastic job of explaining some of the early history of fruit and orchard cultivation.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

A calming book, that fills my mind with images of orchards of times past. I will need to re-read this eventually.

[Kelsey Woods · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNFed.
the author's trying to squeeze in as much as information he can possibly muster and left me confused.

[Hayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book. It's history, art history, myth, anthropology, botany all together to transport us to an orchard of our own.

[tristan · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderfully illustrated and written introductory book on pomology, had an absolute blast reading