Community Orchards Project
Coronation Community Orchards
To celebrate the King’s Coronation, North Northamptonshire Council received government funding is helping 24 groups, parish councils and schools to plant community orchards this winter.
NNC have worked in partnership with Stamford Community Orchard Group to enable the communities and schools to plant fruit trees on publicly accessible land and school grounds. This will keep our beautiful, bountiful and biodiverse orchards alive and productive in North Northamptonshire.
Update in November 2024
Already many of the groups and schools have been preparing for the planting and recruiting volunteers. Children at King's Cliffe Primary School have pressed local apples to get a taste for the juice.
In late January more than 700 grafted and seedling fruit trees will be delivered to the groups with a planting workshop on January 28th. Then there will be a flurry of planting activity before the buds break in the spring.
Gretton Parish Council has recently purchased an acre of land on which they will be planting a traditional orchard with about 100 apple, pear, plum and gage trees.
Contact:
Hannah Dunstan | Woodland Ranger
North Northamptonshire Council
Download a leaflet/guide
This has more details with live links and can be printed out.
Local events in the New Year
Wassailing, a practical grafting workshop and how to prune fruit trees.
Follow the link for details.
The local importance of orchards
The draft Local Nature Recovery Strategy for North Northamptonshire includes traditional orchards, widely spaced with high trunks, as an important habitat to conserve and develop. Traditional orchards develop over 100 or more years with ‘standard’ trees at low density and main branches above the reach of grazing animals. They can have significant ecological value and wildlife diversity. Ongoing research, in both the UK and abroad, has identified their importance for birds, including the woodpeckers, bullfinch, fieldfare and redwing. The trees veteranise within 50 years as the dead and decaying wood provides a microhabitat for fungi and saproxylic invertebrates.
Many of these old orchards have been grubbed up or gone for housing and industrial development, even though they are a Priority Habitat in the Northamptonshire Biodiversity Action Plan.
All through the year an orchard can enrich the landscape and biodiversity of the local area
The Orchard Year
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In the autumn fruit can be picked, processed and used to promote healthy, local food. You could organise community fruit pressing to make juice, cider and vinegar. Borrow a fruit mill and press from Stamford Community Orchard Group here.)
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In the winter the orchard can be celebrated with a wassail and new fruit trees and a hedge can be added to the orchard. You can organise a wassail event like this. And why not attend a grafting workshop?
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In the spring the blossom and trees provide a focus for exploring pollinators and nature in all its forms. Why not organise an Orchard Blossom event? and plant wild flowers in the orchard meadow
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In the summer spot the pollinators and growing fruit. Photograph the bumblebee pollinators and add them to local records. Mow or scythe the orchard meadow before the fruit falls
An orchard is natural investment for the future!
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It can bring people together who may be enticed to support or help such an outdoor project.
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It can commemorate any event, such as the King’s Coronation.
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It can provide a cool, shady, screened area for quiet enjoyment, such as picnics or special events.
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Seeing families lying under drifting blossom or picking and tasting their first fruit will soften any heart.