The Orchards Path The Orchards Path
Newly Planted Community Orchards
Blondin Orchard
Walbottle Community Orchard
Two Community Orchards in Bath
Gabriel’s Orchard, Pilton
Other New Orchards
Blondin Orchard, in Ealing, West London, covers around a fifth of a 2-hectare allotment that has been owned by the London Borough of Ealing since 1926. Before that it was part of a local family farm estate and from 1750-1834 formed part of the Brentford Nursery, which specialised in fruit trees and held more than 300 apple varieties. The whole area is named after the Frenchman Charles Blondin, Niagara Falls tightrope walker, who settled here upon retirement. His feats (and a couple of apple varieties) are celebrated in local road names. Designs were drawn up by the council following wide-ranging consultation with residents. Many of the fruit varieties subsequently planted in the orchard were known to have been grown during the time of the Brentford Nursery. As cultivation of the municipal allotments declined, the council asked local people for their ideas on bringing the area back into community use. More than 150 people expressed opinions, and the consensus was for a Community Orchard within a nature area. The council’s aims were: ‘to bring a redundant allotment back into active and sustainable community use; to develop the area’s interest for wild life; to establish a successful Community Orchard with good fruit production; and to develop the area through ongoing consultation with local people’. The orchard was planted on 19 February 1997 to commemorate the centenary of Blondin’s death. Fifty local people helped to plant 46 apple trees. Individual trees were protected with sturdy wooden cagetype guards. The grassland beneath the trees is mown twice a year by the council. A 50-centimetre clearance is left around each tree when mowing. Local residents have carried out weeding and mulching within the area of the tree guards. A standpipe has enabled people to water the young trees if necessary. A management plan was completed with help from the London Ecology Unit. A longer-term plan for the orchard will be drawn up by the council and the Friends of Blondin Park. Ideas include fruit production, links with schools, training for new skills, grazing of the orchard by sheep, wild life observances and seating. The orchard may be expanded to take in many of the existing cherry trees within the nature area. Very few trees have been lost since planting. This is partly due to the orchard’s location off a main road behind overlooking houses, but also because people enjoy the orchard and see it working. Losses of any trees are replaced. The establishment of a Friends Group – 50 members at time of writing – has led to collaboration between local people and the council to improve the area. A management plan for the whole nature area, including the orchard, is being jointly prepared. Local people are using a public open space and beginning to work together and think creatively about new opportunities for its social use and its benefit to the local environment. Apple Day has been celebrated in the orchard since 1997. A slow worm was found on Apple Day 1999.
Walbottle Community Orchard is on Tyneside. Encouraged by several successful Apple Day celebrations, the Countryside Ranger Service of Newcastle City Council led a public consultation of plans for a Community Orchard on the edge of Curtens’ Quarry in Walbottle, west of the city in October 1997. Four months later local people planted more than 50 apple, pear and cherry trees on a third of a hectare of former grazing land. The orchard has already been included in play schemes and educational visits by local primary schools, and has hosted launch celebrations of the adjacent Walbottle Brickworks Local Nature Reserve. In autumn 1998, thousands of snowdrop and bluebell bulbs were planted between the fruit trees, and these spring flowers will continue to attract people into the orchard while the young fruit trees develop.
Two Community Orchards in Bath
Bloomfield Community Orchard and Lower Common Allotment Orchards are in Bath. Peter Andrews and Tony Ambrose, local residents whose houses back onto the Bloomfield allotments in Oldfield Park, noticed that four central allotments were untended. They decided to gather support to create a Community Orchard for everyone to enjoy.
At the same time, on the other side of the River Avon, Tim Baines of Bath Organic Group was helping to set up a Community Orchard at the Lower Common Allotments organic demonstration site at Victoria Park. St Stephen’s Allotment Society was formed to protect the green, open space at Lansdown in Bath from becoming a housing development. After a long-running battle with the Bath & Wells Diocese which owns the allotments, the group was awarded a £40,000 lottery grant in 1999 to buy part of the land and turn it into a Millennium Green for community use.
Many allotments are underused and Community Orchards can offer one way of keeping them cultivated and producing a communal crop. Knowledge and neighbourly cooperation can continue through the exchange of horticultural tips and recipes as well as through a shared appreciation of the beauty which the fruit trees will eventually contribute.
Establishing a community use for allotments – where a group is involved as opposed to individuals – not only trengthens the sense of community within the area, but helps to protect them. Bath was surrounded by orchards just over 100 years ago. Few old specimens have survived, along with the varieties they bear.
Planting an apple tree is not to be undertaken lightly – standard trees can live for a hundred years or more and during their lifetime produce hundreds of tonnes of fruit. Fruit trees require care, which is especially important as they become established.
Peter Andrews, who has been involved in community projects over many years, was well aware of this when he called a meeting at his house to discuss setting up the Bloomfield Community Orchard. A number of factors had to fall into place for the plan to proceed. The idea had to win the support of the local authority. Bath and North East Somerset Council allowed the group to secure the four plots at a reduced rate and gave permission for the land to be used as an orchard – there are often local bye-laws prohibiting the planting of trees on allotments. At a well-attended meeting at Peter’s house, a list of ideas and designs for the project were discussed. Peter takes up the story:
We decided to plant apple trees, a hedge made of willows and various wild plants, to dig a pond to promote wild life and to provide somewhere to sit. The whole project was designed to be light-weight, without tedious meetings. We get together three or four times a year to deal with the business and maintenance and generally have a good time. The cost of trees is quite high, and as we didn’t have any money, we applied to various people for sponsorship. We found this very fruitful, as trees are apparently very non-controversial. South West Electricity Board gave us free rein to choose as many trees as we needed from their nursery.
Wessex Water bought the liner and plants for the pond, Shell sponsored our mower and Marks & Spencer also gave us financial support. Since 1997, the group have planted apple varieties that will eventually give them fruit from July right through to the following May. These include among others, Beauty of Bath (ready to eat by July), Ashmead’s Kernal, Golden Russet, Tideman's Early Worcester, Kidd’s Orange Red and George Cave. The only real problem was a concealed river – discovered with the help of a dowser – which ran right through the centre of the orchard. Several trees had been inadvertently planted in bog land and had to be moved. Lots of people donated water plants from their own ponds for the orchard pond. Anyone from Bath or the surrounding areas is welcome to come and join us and see how to set up a project like this. I’d love to see Community Orchards on every spare piece of land or allotment countrywide.
On 23 October 1999 (nearest Sunday to Apple Day) and two years since its inception, Bloomfield Community Orchard held its own Apple Day, with those who had been involved in its creation celebrating its success. Bath Organic Group has been promoting orchards for local communities and is offering a £50 start-up grant to new community orchard groups in the Bath & North East Somerset area.
Gabriel’s Orchard at Pilton in Somerset (both pictures, above) is a new orchard in a rural area where orchards emcompass much cultural and social history. In 1996 the first discussions were held to consider what might be suitable projects for Pilton’s Millennium celebrations. Village resident Joe King tells more:
Jim and Anne Dowling very generously donated a couple of acres of land on the edge of the village, which had once been part of Pilton Vineyard – on a south-facing slope and well drained. It was decided that it would be a great opportunity to create a Community Orchard which would seek to preserve the variety of trees which had been important to Somerset and in particular to Pilton itself. The legal formalities were dealt with and a trust document was set up making the Parish Council the Custodian Trustees, and the day to day management was vested in four Managing Trustees. This format has worked well.
Grants were applied for and this allowed us to fence
the area effectively and make our first purchase of
trees. These were obtained from Thornhayes Nursery
of Cullompton who have a catalogue rich in the older
varieties of fruit trees. Planting day came and our
volunteers set to and got them all planted. Our aim is
to involve volunteers in all aspects of the orchard
management and we now set aside the first Saturday
morning in the month as a working party to carry
out the various jobs that need to be done.
Villagers were encouraged to sponsor a tree in the orchard and the response has been very enthusiastic with nearly a hundred trees now sponsored. Important links were forged with Les Davies, the Mendip Hills Warden, who supervises our annual pruning morning and is teaching us the basics of budding and grafting. The next step was to identify varieties of apples in the local orchards which were important to preserve. We were again fortunate to make contact with Liz Copas from Long Ashton who is an expert in cider apple recognition, and for the last two autumns we have toured the orchards in the Parish, identifying those trees that are important to preserve. We have now budded seventy young trees in our nursery beds and these will be planted out next year.
All in all, creating the Orchard has been great fun. We are all amateurs but nothing succeeds like enthusiasm. No doubt we still have lots to learn but I've yet to hear someone say that it wasn’t worthwhile. Certainly we would encourage anyone to have a go.
New Community Orchards continue to be planted in many different forms and by many different groups around the country. These include school orchards, city orchards, a linear orchard along a cycle track in Gloucestershire, an orchard of local varieties around a caravan site and footpath in Norfolk and in the National Forest in Leicestershire on land around a community hospital.
Support for planting and management Under the Environmental Stewardship scheme (formerly the Countryside Stewardship Scheme, started by the Countryside Commission (now Countryside Agency) and taken over by DEFRA, management grants are available in England for the restoration of traditional apple, pear, cherry, plum damson orchards and cob nut plats. Details are available from DEFRA (www.defra.gov.uk or Chris Wedge, Defra Rural Development Service +44(0)117 959 1000).
Some county and district councils offer support, advice and occasionally grants. Contact the tree officer or landscape section. Also contact your Local Agenda 21 officer who can give advice on ways in which we can live in a more sustainable way. Providing local fruit for local consumption is a good example of this. There are many commercial and charitable sources of small funds.
If you have a Community Orchard, please let us know -