Open Country Podcast
1) Wildlife Artists on Massingham Heath
Martha Kearney is in Norfolk to walk the heathland that is being returned to its ancient grassland habitat by Olly Birkbeck. The Society of Wildlife Artists is holding a year-long residency documentin...Show More
2) Roadside Verges
Britain's roadside verges rarely get much attention, but can play host to a whole range of plant and animal species. In this programme Martha Kearney finds out about this overlooked habitat. She meets...Show More
3) Welsh Incident in Criccieth
Jon Gower is in Criccieth in Gwynedd, to explore the area’s connection to Robert Graves’s 1929 poem, Welsh Incident. Robert Graves wrote the poem after inspiration struck on his train travels in the a...Show More
4) Deer Stalking in Essex
Britain’s deer population has surged to around two million. These iconic animals are well-loved, but their growing numbers are putting real pressure on the countryside - stripping young hedges and woo...Show More
5) Carrifran Wildwood
Martha Kearney visits one of the UK’s earliest environmental restoration projects. Southern Scotland was once covered in broadleaf woodland, rich scrub, heath and bog. That was before sheep, humans an...Show More
6) In Celebration of the Daffodil
Thriplow Daffodil Weekend in Cambridgeshire started as a way of raising money for a church roof in 1968. Nearly sixty years later, it is thriving. More than 40,000 bulbs are planted each year to creat...Show More
7) Restoring Wallasea's Wild Coast
Martha Kearney visits Wallasea Island in Essex, the largest manmade coastal nature reserve in Europe. It was created from the 3 million tonnes of London clay that were excavated in the digging out of ...Show More
8) Stroudwater's missing mile
The Stroudwater canal in Gloucestershire was built in the 1770s. It brought coal to the mills along the Stroud valleys, which had become an important centre for the manufacture of woollen cloth, but t...Show More
9) The Rock Houses of Staffordshire
Martha Kearney visits the unique cave dwellings at Kinver Edge that were lived in until the 1960s. Cosy cottages were built into the soft red sandstone with windows and doors and families lived in the...Show More
10) Hedgerow havens
Hedges are such a traditional part of the British landscape that most of us don't give them a second thought. They're usually associated with the enclosures of the 17th-19th centuries, when the mediev...Show More