Creating an orchard, either on your own land as part of a farm or small-holding, or with your local community is a wonderful way to grow sustainable local fruit to enjoy, market and share, and help create much-needed new habitats for wildlife.
Why plant an orchard?
Relaxing in the shade, delicious fruit to hand; dappled sunshine through leaves, the drowsy hum of bees... over the years orchards have played an important role in our history, culture and imagination. The most obvious benefit is to grow your own fruit to sell or eat, however planting an orchard has lots more benefits too.
Traditional orchards, once commonplace across the countryside, are now a small and dwindling number. It is thought that 60% of England's orchards have disappeared since the 1950s, often grubbed up for development, crops or pony paddocks.
With this decline, alonsgide the loss of habitats for birds, bees and mammals like the long-eared bat, also comes the loss of local fruit varieties. Incredibly, there are believed to be roughly 3,000 varieties of eating, cooking and cider apples, whilst damsons, cherries, plums, nuts and pears have hundreds of different varieties too! Planting new orchards using grafts from local fruit trees will to help preserve this rich regional diversity.
How do I plant an orchard?
If you are interested in planting an orchard, Common Ground are an excellent organisation who have decades of experience helping groups to create and look after their own community orchards.
Visit the Common Ground website for contact details, and to purchase their brilliant guide to community orchards, the Community Orchard Handbook, which tells you all you need to know!
Go back to choosing your trees
Use the links below to read about what is involved in planting your own orchard.