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

by **Bernd Brunner** (Author), **Lori Lantz** (Translator)

**A captivating cultural and scientific history of orchards, for readers of Michael Pollan's _The Botany of Desire_ and Mark Kurlansky's _Salt_.**

**Throughout history, orchards have nourished both body and soul:** they are sites for worship and rest, inspiration for artists and writers, and places for people to gather. In _Taming Fruit_, award-winning writer Bernd Brunner interweaves evocative illustrations with masterful prose to show that the story of orchards is a story of how we have shaped nature to our desires for millennia.

As Brunner tells it, the first orchards may have been oases dotted with date trees, where desert nomads stopped to rest. In the Amazon, Indigenous people 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 don't just produce fruit; they also inspire 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.

### Author Biography

**Bernd Brunner** is the author of several books including _Birdmania_ and _Winterlust_, and his writings have appeared in publications around the world including _Lapham's Quarterly_, the_Paris Review_, _Quartz_, the _Times Literary Supplement_, and the _Wall Street Journal_. He divides his time between Istanbul and Berlin.

**Number of Pages:** 304

**Dimensions:** 1.4 x 8.8 x 6.7 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** October 31, 2021

## Details

- **Price:** 29.95 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 29.95 USD | In stock |

## Images

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

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> Updated: 2026-07-21