Quick Take
- Narration: Poppy Okotcha reads her own book, and the intimacy of that choice is the whole point, her voice carries the same quality of careful attention she brings to her garden.
- Themes: Regenerative growing, seasonal living, ecological grief and wonder
- Mood: Slow and deeply attentive, like a long walk through a garden in good company
- Verdict: A memoir-gardening hybrid that earns its lyrical ambitions, best absorbed in segments rather than sessions.
I came to this one in early spring, when my own tiny balcony was full of half-started seedlings I was not entirely sure I knew what to do with. I had picked up a handful of gardening books over the past year, most of them practical in the way that makes them useful and a little joyless, and A Wilder Way sat in my queue as something I kept meaning to get to. I finally listened on a long Saturday morning, walking and then sitting with coffee, and the experience of Poppy Okotcha reading her own words about her garden in Devon felt genuinely like company.
That quality of companionship is the book’s defining characteristic. This is not a how-to guide dressed up in literary clothing. It is a memoir of a relationship with a specific piece of land, organized around a full year of seasons, and it happens to contain practical instruction woven into its fabric. The distinction matters for setting expectations.
Our Take on A Wilder Way
Okotcha won the Jane Grigson Trust Sous Chef Award for New Food and Drink Writers in 2025, and the recognition makes sense. Her prose has the quality that award committees tend to call “voice”, something immediate and genuine that is genuinely difficult to manufacture. The book moves between tips for sowing and growing, foraging notes on wild ingredients she finds in and around her Devon garden, seasonal recipes, and longer meditations on environmental questions and the folktales she carries from her English and Nigerian heritage.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s blurb, calling it “a renewed sense of wonder and delight at the joys and challenges of loving and (on good days) living off a small patch of land”, is accurate but slightly undersells the political dimension. Okotcha is attentive to environmental issues in ways that never feel grafted on. The ecological grief she processes through her relationship with her garden is as much a subject of the book as the gardening itself.
Why Listen to A Wilder Way
Author-narrated audiobooks are only as good as the author’s voice and pacing, and Okotcha’s are both excellent. Katherine May, whose own audiobooks demonstrate a similar quality of careful, season-attuned attention, is quoted calling A Wilder Way “a wise, passionate, heartfelt book,” and that trifecta describes the narration as much as the text. Okotcha does not perform her own words; she simply speaks them, which is harder than it sounds and rarer than it should be.
The nine-hour duration suits the seasonal structure. This is not a book to sprint through. Reviewers consistently describe it as beautiful and inspiring, and the word “nourishing” appears in Lucy Jones’s blurb for good reason, it rewards the kind of listening you do when you are not trying to consume content but actually inhabit it for a while.
What to Watch For in A Wilder Way
Listeners looking for a structured planting guide or a sequential vegetable-garden manual will find the organization loose. The book follows seasons rather than topics, and the practical information is interspersed with memoir and environmental reflection. One Spanish reviewer described it as exemplary in its appeal for treating nature with greater care, and that ecological ethic is present throughout, which may or may not be what you came for depending on your reading goals.
The Devon setting is specific in ways that mean some of the foraging and seasonal timing will be off for listeners in other climates. The principles translate, but the particular plants and conditions are English.
Who Should Listen to A Wilder Way
Gardeners interested in regenerative and wilder approaches to their plots, rather than controlled formal gardens. Readers who enjoyed Katherine May’s Wintering or Lucy Jones’s Losing Eden, both of which share Okotcha’s quality of ecological attention, will find this a natural companion. Those who need practical garden instruction organized by task rather than by season should look elsewhere. Best listened to outdoors, or at least near a window.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this primarily a practical gardening guide or a memoir?
It is both, but the memoir and reflective elements are primary. Okotcha structures the book around a year in her Devon garden, weaving in practical sowing and growing advice, foraging notes, and seasonal recipes alongside personal stories and environmental writing.
Does Poppy Okotcha’s narration of her own work work well in audio?
Yes, author-narrated books succeed or fail on the quality of the author’s voice and pacing, and Okotcha’s are both well-suited to the intimacy the book requires. The performance feels genuine rather than performed.
Will the garden advice translate for listeners outside the UK?
The Devon-specific setting means some plant choices, foraging details, and seasonal timing are rooted in an English climate. The principles of wilder, more regenerative gardening are broadly applicable, but the specifics require some adaptation for different zones.
What other audiobooks is this comparable to in tone and approach?
Katherine May’s Wintering and Lucy Jones’s Losing Eden share A Wilder Way’s quality of seasonal, ecologically attentive nonfiction. Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk is another touchstone for memoir that takes the natural world seriously as both subject and lens.
