Have you ever heard of a black poplar? You've probably seen one, at least in a painting, even if you didn't recognise it as such. The black poplar is Britain's most endangered tree, and features in Constable's famous work, The Hay Wain. Martha Kearney is in Suffolk to see black poplars at Flatford Mill, the location in the painting, and to talk to botanical artist Ruth Wharrier about painting from nature. With tree wardens David Appleton and Fe Morris, Martha surveys new trees on the riverbank nearby. She finishes by visiting a new clone bank of trees at Jimmy's Farm, which are thriving between the wolves and polar bears. Without active support, this native British tree could disappear from our countryside altogether.

Suffolk Tree Warden Network: https://www.suffolktreewardens.org.uk https://ruthwharrier.com https://www.suffolkwildlifetrust.org/adult-learning/botanical-art

Producer: Beth O'Dea

Tucked away in a wooded valley on the outskirts of Bristol is a magical woodland nature reserve, Snuff Mills. Helen Mark discovers what lies beneath the trees, a now peaceful place with a history of heavy industry, where milling and stone quarrying has left behind a stunning playground for walkers and climbers. Local residents John, Beryl and Margaret grew up next to the quarry and witnessed its transformation from their secret playground to a busy public park. Engineer Geoff Wallis helped to literally unearth a fascinating piece of industrial history, and Steve England shows Helen the natural secrets of the valley.

Following the stones of the quarry Helen crosses the river and finds the grounds of what was once Bristol’s asylum and – Helen hears from volunteer Anwyl Cooper-Willis - a landscape carefully designed to be therapeutic for patients and speed their recovery. But where does the name Snuff Mills come from? Is it really one of the most haunted places in Bristol? And which Hollywood star has a connection with the Asylum's story?

Presented by Helen Mark Produced by Beth Sagar-Fenton Assistant production by Ellie Richold Series Producer: Emma Campbell

Halfway between Orkney and Shetland, Fair Isle is one of Britain’s most isolated inhabited islands. It's famous for knitting and birds, and those still form the basis of the island's economy, as Martha Kearney discovers.

As an inviting rock in the North Atlantic it’s a magnet for migratory birds, with exhausted individuals blown off course regularly adding to a long list of unusual species recorded by the local bird observatory. Martha joins the island’s Head of Ornithology, Alex Penn, to ring some visitors and sit for a while with Britain’s friendliest colonies of puffin.

French knitwear designer, Marie Brahat introduces Martha to her flock of sheep and gives her a lesson in turning their wool into the unique designs of Fair Isle knitwear. School teacher Jonathan Pye is the newest arrival on the island, currently dealing with a school roll of just two pupils - brothers Luca and Anders.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Martha Kearney visits the Menai Strait - the stretch of water which separates Ynys Môn or Anglesey from mainland Wales. She learns about its treacherous tides and hears about the history of its two bridges, both built in the 19th century to improve travel between London and Ireland. The Menai Suspension Bridge was designed by Thomas Telford and will celebrate its 200th anniversary at the start of 2026. The newer Britannia Bridge had to be completely rebuilt after a disastrous fire in 1970.

Martha meets an academic from Bangor University who explains how ocean physics make the waters of the Strait so dangerous. At low tide she braves the pouring rain to go rock-pooling with a wildlife expert, who explains why the Strait is such a special habitat for marine life. She also visits Church Island - a tiny island in the middle of the Strait which is home to an ancient church - and meets the people who look after it.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Martha Kearney discovers the Ice Age ponds in Norfolk, called pingos, which are being brought back to life, and provide a home for the Northern Pool Frog. It's the UK's rarest amphibian and had become extinct in this country, but it's now breeding there again and Martha is keen to see one. With 400 pingos, Thompson Common is the most important site for pond wildlife in the country and also holds a precious store of seeds.

Norfolk Wildlife Trust: https://www.norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk/ThompsonCommon

Find out more about The Pingo Trail Walk: https://www.explorenorfolkuk.co.uk/pingo-trail.html

Work supported by Natural England’s Species Recovery Programme.

Producer: Beth O'Dea

Caz Graham tries out Miles without Stiles, a scheme which helps disabled people access the Lake District. She joins a group of people in a fleet of mobility vehicles on a route from Sizergh Castle near Kendal, and visits the Keswick to Threlkeld path which was rebuilt after Storm Desmond but attracted controversy when it was surfaced with tarmac. Will Clark explains how the scheme helps him continue to enjoy the countryside after a mountain biking accident left him paralysed from the neck down. He explores the lakes and fells using a power chair which he operates with his chin.

Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Sally Heaven

Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire is one of the few remaining fragments of England’s original fenland. A place loved by naturalists for generations, it was Victorian botanists and entomologists who led the efforts to ensure the land was entrusted to the National Trust, which has protected it for 125 years.

Today, Wicken Fen is a thriving mosaic of flowering meadows, sedge and reedbeds. It is one of the most species-rich areas in Britain, home to endangered species such as the crane, bittern, marsh harrier and great crested newt.

Martha Kearney explores the unique history and ecology of this remarkable landscape alongside sound artist Kathy Hinde. Together, they craft a handheld aeolian harp – a stringed instrument played solely by the wind. Kathy Hinde has created sound sculptures across Wicken Fen to celebrate 125 years of this special place, called 'Listen to the Voices of the Fen'.

Martha also meets local volunteer Gerard Smallwood, who demonstrates how the last surviving wooden windpump in the Fens, an iconic piece of machinery, is now used to re-wet the land. Ajay Tegala, a National Trust warden, shares recent wildlife sightings, offering a glimpse into the lives that flourish in this delicate ecosystem.

Producer: Eliza Lomas

Tucked in behind Dorset's famous Chesil Beach is a unique and beautiful place - the Fleet Lagoon. Martha Kearney explores a thousand year history of human guardianship of birds on the lagoon. On the way she gets a close-up view of little tern dating platforms on the Fleet itself, learns why the swans of the ancient Abbotsbury Swannery are much safer now and who they hate the most, and - of course - learns to build a nest.

Contributors include:

Angela Thomas - Assistant Warden, Chesil and Fleet Nature Reserve Chris Goding - RSPB Project Officer & Assistant Warden, Chesil Little Tern Recovery Project Steve Groves - Swanherd, Abbotsbury Swannery

With thanks to Dorset Wildlife Trust.

Presenter: Martha Kearney Producer: Beth Sagar-Fenton

Helen Mark visits the port of Bristol – finding out how it changed the local landscape, and how the landscape in turn shaped it. She learns how and why Bristol became a port city in the first place and finds out about the creation of the floating harbour in 1809. She uncovers a tale of mud, the enemy of shipping, which scuppered the port’s ability to take on larger ships, resulting eventually in its move down to the mouth of the river in 1873. Helen visits the historic Underfall boat yard, which was badly damaged in an arson attack two years ago, but is now gradually returning to its former glory. She finds out how the modern port has managed to carve out spaces for wildlife, learns how it still continues to change the landscape today, and hears about plans to build a “compensatory” nature reserve further down the coast.

Contributors include:

Tiggy Latcham - Bristol Ferry Company Sarah Murray - Director, Underfall Yard Anne Hayes - Head of Environment and Sustainability, The Bristol Port Company Lucy Taylor - Deputy Environment & Sustainability Manager, The Bristol Port Company John Chaplin - Director of External Affairs and Special Projects at The Bristol Port Company

Producer: Beth Sagar-Fenton

The Fylde peninsula stands between Morecombe Bay, the Bowland Hills and the Irish Sea. Its position means that it's a very windy spot. Windmills have been a feature of the area for hundreds of years, built to grind grain and drain marshy areas in order to turn them into agricultural land. At one point there were over thirty-five windmills on the Fylde coast. Rendered obsolete by the arrival of new technologies – first steam, then electricity - only a few are still standing today. In this programme, Martha Kearney visits one of the last remaining windmills, Little Marton in Blackpool. Built in 1838, it inspired the author Charles Allen Clarke to write 'Windmill Land', documenting the windmills of rural Lancashire. Martha is shown around the mill by the author's grand-daughter, who explains its significance.

Martha travels inland to discover how some of the impacts of the previous generations' decisions about landscape management are being reversed. Where land was once drained, in some places it is now being "re-wetted". She visits Winmarleigh carbon farm where Lancashire Wildlife Trust is running a project to restore peatland which was damaged in the past by drainage, involving planting 150,000 plugs of sphagnum moss. She learns how that's done, and meets the scientist who's monitoring the effect this has on greenhouse gas emissions.

Back on the coast again at Lytham St Annes, Martha finds out about the role the wind has to play in 21st century activities in the area, where sports like kite-surfing and land-yachting are growing in popularity. She meets a man whose father set up the local land-yachting club, and who - now in his 80s - is still going strong in the sport.

Producer: Emma Campbell Assistant producer: Jo Peacey

Helen Mark hears the story of how the ancient Epping Forest was fought for, and saved by, the people of East London.

In the late 19th century, Epping Forest was threatened with enclosures. As elsewhere in Britain, local landowners were selling off common land for farming or building developments. But local people fought back. Beginning with a Loughton man, Thomas Willingale, who continued to assert his commoner rights to lop trees for firewood, the groundswell of protest later became thousands of working class East Enders gathering on Wanstead Flats - the area closest to the city of London.

The land of Epping Forest was eventually bought by the City of London Corporation, and with the Epping Forest Act of 1878, was forever saved from more enclosures. As Queen Victoria declared in 1882, "It gives me great satisfaction to dedicate this beautiful forest for the use and enjoyment of my people for all time”.

Part of the responsibility of the new conservators of the forest, the City of London, was to look after and protect the forest for both people and wildlife. Helen Mark hears from those who job it is to carry that out, including Senior Epping Forest Keeper Martin Whitfield and Head of Conservation Tanith Cook. She also speaks to local historian, Georgina Green - author of 'Keepers, Cockneys and Kitchen Maids: Memories of Epping Forest, 1900-25', a book about the forests' eventful past, who also talks about her own memories of the place. And finally Luke Turner, author of 'Out of The Woods', who lives on the forest border talks about the myriad ways humans and Epping Forest are entwined.

Produced by Eliza Lomas, BBC Audio Bristol.

Rose Ferraby visits Orkney to discover the rich history of a stretch of coastline on the small Island of Rousay. She joins archaeologists from the University of the Highlands and Islands as they travel through the rugged landscape and varied timescales of Rousay's coastline, from prehistory to clearances. They chart the legacy of ancient islanders and uncover stories hidden within the island's brochs, tombs, churches and farmsteads.

Producer: Ruth Sanderson

The Sefton coastline stretches for around twenty miles between Liverpool and Southport. It has one of the largest sand dune systems in the country, but is also one of the fastest-eroding shorelines, shifting back by around four metres ever year. In this programme, Martha Kearney visits Sefton to explore the ways in which this ever-changing landscape has been shaped by both human activity and the elements. She walks along Blitz Beach, where rubble was dumped from buildings destroyed when Bootle and Liverpool were bombed during World War II, and finds out how this has affected erosion over the decades since then. She learns about the treacherous sands of Crosby, where the famous Antony Gormley sculptures on the beach have proved a huge tourist attraction, but where an RNLI lifeguard explains how it is all too easy for unwary visitors to get stuck in the quicksand and mud. A few miles further up the coast at Formby, she finds out how work is going on to restore degraded sand dunes and goes out looking for sand lizards with one of the National Trust rangers. She asks what the future holds for this coastline, with its diverse wildlife habitats and fascinating history.

Producer: Emma Campbell Assistant producer: Jo Peacey

Martha Kearney takes a trip through the past, present and future of mining in Cornwall, finding out how it has shaped the landscape. After crouching in an old tunnel at Geevor Tin Mine with the miners who used to work in it, she journeys into the future at a new lithium mine based in an old china clay pit in St Austell.

Producer: Beth O'Dea

Helen Mark visits 50 square miles that were neither England nor Scotland. The Debatable Lands, between Carlisle and Gretna, were home to untameable crime families that petrified the most powerful of Lords and Kings. For hundreds of years governments in London and Edinburgh left the region to its own laws and moral codes. When they did intervene, the result was an explosion of violence that's still visible in the landscape of derelict towers and still audible in the Border Ballads collected by Walter Scott.

Author, Graham Robb guides Helen through the region's complex history and Ian Scott Martin takes her to the ramparts of Gilnockie Tower- the fearsome stronghold of the Armstrong family, one of the most notorious clans of Border Reivers.

The Union of the Crowns in the early 17th century brought the age of the Debatable Land to an end, ushering in a long period of peace broken abruptly in 1915. On the Western Front the British Army was running out of shells. In Westminster the government fell and the decision was made to build an enormous 9 mile long munitions factory, stretching across the region. Rebecca Short of the Devil's Porridge Museum guides Helen around the remains of the industrial landscape in which 30,000 people- 16,000 of them women- worked in the production of the cordite that propelled shells across the battlefields of Belgium and France.

The western tip of the Debatable Land reaches out to the saltmarshes of the Solway Firth. This apparently peaceful landscape soon yields its secrets. The land is constantly battered and transformed by the tides while animals and plants have to adapt to survive the harsh and dynamic conditions. Helen explores the creeks, bogs and rivers with David Pickett of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and Chris Miles of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Martha Kearney follows the River Ouse, from the High Weald to the Sussex coast and - finally - into the sea itself. Along the way, she discovers how one of the UK's largest nature recovery projects is taking root.

The project is called 'Weald to Waves' - it's a wildlife corridor that has been mapped out over more than 100 miles of Sussex landscape and coastline, to encourage biodiversity on a huge scale, connecting food, farming, nature and people. Encompassing more than 20,000 hectares of contiguous habitat, it is a huge coming-together of farmers, land managers, councils, utility companies, wildlife charities, schools, gardeners and community groups. Martha meets some of the people who have pledged to be a part of this huge collaborative effort.

Producer: Becky Ripley

For young carers, it can be difficult to find time to get away from home and enjoy the great outdoors. In this programme Helen Mark meets a group of 12-13 year-olds who all have caring responsibilities for a family member at home, but who are spending a night camping out on Dartmoor. She joins them as they pitch their tents, do some river-dipping, and help with feeding farm livestock. As dusk falls, they set off on a night-time walk across the moor - battling their way through gorse bushes in the dark, to reach a rocky outcrop where they lie on their backs to gaze in silence at the stars.

Helen talks to some of the young carers about their experiences, and hears from the charity which organised the trip and the ranger from Dartmoor National Park who guides the young people through the activities. They tell her why it's important to offer opportunities like this and explain how much difference a taste of the outdoors can make to the life of a young carer. For some of them, this is their first experience of spending a night in a tent.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Jon Gower is in Aberaeron, Ceredigion, to explore how mackerel (and other fish) have shaped the people and landscape.

Jon joins the pretty harbour town’s annual mackerel festival, where the humble mackerel is given thanks at the end of its season with a funeral procession, complete with wailing widows, a blessing from the local reverend Dilwyn Jones and, most years, a sunset cremation on the beach. Here, Jon meets local townsfolk to hear how fishing connects the generations far back in their families and how livelihoods, mackerel populations and the landscape of this town are changing with the climate crisis.

Jon also speaks to Elinor Gwilym from the Cymdeithas Aberaeron Society, who talk about how the charming aesthetic of the town is influenced by its connection to fishing, with the colourful harbour houses originally built for sea captains.

Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio, Bristol

The growth of wildlife documentaries and social media has boosted our interest in wildlife. Footage of whales, birds and mammals shot by keen nature lovers around the British Isles has alerted us to the presence of apex predators such as the Orca in the waters around northern Scotland. It's not surprising that people visit the island of Mull in the hope of spotting some of the abundant wildlife. Otters are especially popular at the moment. The creation of the Hebridean Whale Trail has also highlighted the presence of the different cetaceans in the sea around Mull and visitors can take boat tours or walks around the island in search of dolphins, porpoises, minke and humpback whales. If they're lucky they may spot the remaining two West Coast Orca - John Coe and Aquarius. But while nature tourism is welcomed, those who work in wildlife conservation on Mull are keen that visitors are respectful and responsible towards the creatures they've come to see.

Producer Maggie Ayre takes a walk from Tobermory on the Hebridean Whale Trail with Morven Summers and her colleague Sadie Gorvett to learn about the work they do in encouraging visitors to log their cetacean sightings on their app and take part in a Citizen Science survey of marine mammals. She meets Mull's Wildlife Warden Jan Dunlop on Calgary Bay to hear why Jan is concerned about the presence and proximity of too many people to the island's otter population and the impact that can have on the animals. All three advocate a kind of slow nature tourism that means appreciating the beauty of all the wildlife on the island as opposed to going with a checklist of creatures to spot.

Produced and presented by Maggie Ayre

Helen Mark heads to the Shropshire hills to discover how to write about nature at The Hurst, a place dedicated to artistic practice. She meets author-tutors Miriam Darlington (Otter Country, Owl Sense) and Patrick Barkham (The Swimmer, Wild Isles) who share with Helen their techniques of encouraging new writers to find their own voice and how to turn observation and reflection into a compelling story. As she wanders through the summertime meadows with the group of budding writers, she hears how they hone their skills of attention and why writing about the natural world matters to them. Helen also gains a sense of this pocket of the natural world within the landscape, finding out about the other species who call these Shropshire woodlands and gardens home.

The Hurst is run by the Arvon Foundation who promote creative writing.

Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio, Bristol