British landscapes, patiently listened to.
Open Country is a location-led countryside series built from walks, boat trips, farm visits, reserves, festivals, and conversations in the field. It suits listeners who like ecology explained through real places, from Essex deer management to Scottish wildwood restoration and Devon hedge laying.
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Open Country is a field-based countryside series about the landscapes, wildlife, crafts, histories, and communities of the British Isles. It listens before it explains. Recent episodes begin with concrete details: skylarks near Southend Airport, golden eagles above the Moffat Hills, a ginger Suffolk horse at a daffodil weekend, smoke rising from a chimney in a sandstone cliff. From there, the programme moves outward through conversation. In Essex, deer stalking is treated neither as spectacle nor as sentiment, but as a difficult piece of land management shaped by crop damage, woodland condition, culling, and venison. At Carrifran Wildwood, volunteers and founders describe ecological restoration as an act of patience, where trees, dead wood, fungi, insects, and time become part of the argument. At Wallasea Island, a bird reserve made with material from the London Underground becomes a story about engineering, salt marsh, mudflats, and the pressure of tides. The Stroudwater canal episode looks at a missing mile left by the M5, but it also notices the backs of buildings, the memory of textile mills, and the wildlife returning to restored water. Kinver Edge brings domestic history into focus through rock houses that were inhabited into the 1960s. The programme is especially good at finding the practical question inside a picturesque scene. Who maintains a hedge, and why in winter? What does a living boundary mean to someone from Seattle? How does a river beside a house change with seasons, weather, kingfishers, cormorants, and sudden debris? The tone is warm but not decorative. It makes room for expertise without sealing the listener outside it. Terms such as ecological restoration, landscape-scale deer management, salt marsh, coppicing, and hedge laying sit beside smells of damp, muddy fields, flower arrangements, and the sound of an engine starting on a canal boat. That mixture gives the show its strength. It is not just about beautiful countryside. It is about how places are made, damaged, repaired, remembered, and lived with.
Made for: For listeners drawn to nature, rural history, conservation, traditional crafts, and the lived texture of British places. It especially suits people who prefer slow observation and grounded interviews over studio debate.
What sets it apart: Open Country explains environmental change through exact locations and the people already working there. Its strength is the bridge between sensory field reporting and wider ecological or historical meaning.
Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of the British Isles
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Open Country makes landscape science legible through close observation and conversations with the people restoring, managing and living within particular places.
Open Country begins with a place underfoot and lets observation lead the reporting. The host walks muddy Devon fields with hedge layers, listens to reed cutters working a windblown Norfolk reserve, and follows the return of native woodland in the Scottish Borders.
A muddy hedge becomes living sculpture, and suddenly you want better boots.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A quiet Essex field outing opens onto the practical case for managing Britain's growing deer population.
Open Country follows deer management on a farm roughly two miles from the M25 in Essex, where winter wheat, rape, grass fields, and woodland are feeling the strain of deer activity.
A valley re-forms its wooded past under eagles, with restoration work unfolding at human speed.
Open Country follows a wildwood project in the Scottish Borders, where golden eagles circle above the Moffat Hills and the land is being asked to remember its wooded past.
A daffodil festival becomes a warm, grounded look at village tradition, shared work, and the meaning carried by a familiar flower.
This single-episode review follows the daffodil into the everyday social life of a village. At Triplo Daffodil Weekend, chair Paul describes how a 1968 church-roof fundraiser became an event drawing 12,000 visitors to a village of 350, with about half a million flowers in bloom…
Kinver Edge's sandstone houses sound strange, and the episode shows why they still work.
Open Country makes a steady case for paying attention to Kinver Edge's sandstone rock houses. It moves from the first written record in 1617 to the next one in 1777, when a family there took in a storm-bound travel writer who found the homes warm, cosy, and almost luxurious.
A rainy Devon hedge course becomes a quiet study of craft, weather, and stewardship.
A rainy hedge laying course in East Devon gives the episode its frame, but the best material is the work itself: the branch weave, the bark, the moss, and the winter weather that makes the craft feel practical rather than ornamental.
A reed harvest becomes a patient lesson in land, craft, and family continuity.
This episode starts with a bitter, windy morning at Cley, and that weather does real work in the telling. The reed beds set the tone before Bernard and Kel get on with the practical side: cutting by hand, raking, and explaining why reed quality has to be judged from butt to top…
A portrait of the Isle of Wight that finds creativity in light, nature, and community.
Creative Island with Anneka Rice presents the Isle of Wight as a place where creativity, memory, and community overlap. Anneka Rice speaks from a long attachment to the island, and that personal pull gives the piece its shape.
Wildlife wonder, policy, and fieldwork in conversation.
Field conservation, told by the people doing it.
One plant per episode, and a guest who knows it.
Conservation science and good news, from people doing the work.
At Cley Nature Reserve on Norfolk's coast, the Bishop family harvests reeds for thatching, a tradition spanning five generations.
Carolyn Quinn explores Felixstowe, Suffolk, examining the impact of the UK's largest container port on the town's environment, economy, and community.
Marianne O'Hotter joins The Big Hoof charity on a horseback pilgrimage along St Columba's Way in the Scottish Highlands.
Host Annika Rice explores the Isle of Wight's reputation as a creative hub, visiting artists and historical sites.
Marianne O'Hotter joins a professional deer stalker in Essex to explore the reasons and methods behind controlling Britain's booming deer population.
Open Country begins high above the Moffat Hills.
Open Country follows Triplo's Daffodil Weekend, where Paul Earnshaw says 12,000 visitors come to a village of 350 and the event began in 1968 as a church-roof fundraiser.
Site manager Rachel Fancy explains how Wallasea Island nature reserve was created using three million tonnes of earth from the Crossrail tunnelling project.
A volunteer skipper takes a listener on a boat trip along the Stroudwater Canal, discussing the history of the 'missing mile' filled in for the M5 motorway and the ongoing restoration efforts.
Open Country visits Kinver Edge in Staffordshire and takes a close look at the rock houses cut into a broad sandstone outcrop.
Open Country goes to East Devon for a hedge-laying course on a muddy field.
Philippa Forrester describes living beside a river and observing kingfishers and other wildlife through changing seasons.
A birthday mountain trip with a dog and biscuits, discussing head torches and the sound of crunching.
Anneka Rice explores why the Isle of Wight inspires creativity, visiting local artists and reflecting on its natural beauty and community.