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‘Bird School is a feast for mind and soul, a treasure trove of insights into the enigmatic and enchanting world of the birds we share our lives with but barely notice. I have learnt so much. Every page is a thrill. Bird School has opened my eyes.’ Isabella Tree, author of Wilding
Step into the hide for the evening in The Apple House, with bestselling and award-winning nature writer Adam Nicolson and bestselling author and esteemed horticulturist Sarah Raven for a glorious encounter with the wild to mark the publication of Adam’s brilliant new book: Bird School.
Over the last two or three years Adam and Sarah have embarked on getting to know the birds they have found around them at Perch Hill, their home in Sussex, engaging with a layer of life they had previously almost taken for granted.
Close to Perch Hill, there is a forgotten field overrun by bracken and thicketed by brambles. It is the haunt of deer and many birds–nightingales, the occasional cuckoo, ravens, robins, owls and in summer the sweet-singing warblers that come north from Africa to breed in English woods.
Adam Nicolson wanted to look and listen, to return to ‘bird school’ and see what it might teach him. He built a small shed amongst the trees with nesting boxes and bird feeders. Cocooned inside, season after season, he got to know the birds: where they nest, how they sing, how they mate and fight, what preys on them, what they are like as living things.
At the same time Sarah embarked on a long and careful study of how to make the garden more bird-rich, providing food, shelter and diversity for the birds, while coming to understand just how much a garden benefits from its birds.
The natural world is under siege. This event will illustrate that knowing and understanding more about the birds that surround you, is one way of doing something about it.
Hosted in The Apple House eco-barn, in an old orchard, guests can explore Tom Stuart-Smith’s Plant Library of over 2000 herbaceous perennials and bulbs ahead of the talk and enjoy a drink while they do so.
The event will host a pop-up plant sale from 4pm–6pm including plants propagated by gardeners Millie Souter and Emma Youngman of The Plant Library and Sunnyside Rural Trust’s Orchard Nursery.
It will also be followed by a book signing with books provided by our local independent bookshop, Books On The Hill, St Albans.