Orchard News

The Government has launched the long-awaited 25 Year Environment Plan. Within it are the (safe, commitment-free) targets: creating or restoring 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat outside the protected site network, focusing on priority habitats as part of a wider set of land management changes providing extensive benefits taking action to recover threatened, iconic or economically important species …

The newly restructured Countryside Stewardship scheme now includes orchard works in the mid-tier options. There are two strands to Countryside Stewardship, the existing 10 year higher tier (HT), and the new 5 year mid-tier (MT). They are both the essentially the same, but HT also contains the longer and more complicated options that require bespoke …

FruitID.com are repeating their successful DNA testing initiative. Unknown apples, pears and cherries can be registered for the scheme and leaf samples sent to East Malling Research for fingerprinting. The results will be compared to the DNA profiles of the entire National Fruit Collection, some other large collections, and other samples in the scheme, and …

The Welsh Perry and Cider Society have secured Heritage Lottery Funding for a two-year project called The Heritage of Orchards and Cider Making in Wales. The project aims to secure the future of Welsh variety cider apples and perry pears and are doing so via three strands: working with 14 community groups across Wales to …

Traditional orchards are evocative places, suited to contemplation and reflection. In recognition of this, Lisa Kelly has written four poignant new poems which are available for free access at PN Review. I. JAUNE DE METZ II. THE APPLE MACHINE III. HERE, APPLE TREE IV. A IS FOR APPLE

A Wincanton pub crowned best in UK for cider by CAMRA. There are around 400 varieties of apples and pears used for only for making cider and perry, and a further 150 also used for eating, cooking or all three. Small producers are the most likely to use these rare and local varieties grown in small …

This new tool helps you discover the heritage fruit varieties local to you. Just type in your location and the fruit you are interested in and it will search through thousands of fruit varieties to show you the ones that are local to you. It also shows to which suppliers stock these, making it easier …

The orchard grant scheme is now complete and we are pleased to announce that over the last year our orchard grant scheme has sent out trees and enough grafting kits to plant over 1,500 trees in traditional orchards across the UK- from Cornwall to Scotland. Alarmingly, the orchard mapping work we have been doing over the …

See our orchard team’s very own Megan in glorious Technicolour on a feature about orchard wildlife and grafting fruit trees. Megan spent the day filming in Wiltshire with the BBC Countryfile Diaries team discussing orchard management, grafting, tree planting and fruit varieties. First aired on BBC2 Tuesday 17th May, to be repeated BBC2 Tuesday 24th …

Catch up with our latest activities in the May newsletter. Orchard newsletter May 2016

  The Mid Shires Orchard Group & People’s Trust for Endangered Species  are pleased to present this fantastic event on Saturday, February 2nd 2019 Kindly hosted by Buckingham Garden Centre, Tingewick Road, Buckingham, MK18 4AE Orchard groups, fruit tree owners and enthusiasts are invited to come along and share, swap and buy scionwood (one-year old shoots …

The PTES orchard team are joining forces with the UK Little Owl Project to help discover more about their distribution decline. We’d like to assess the public reception of this species and are also offering free little owl boxes for orchards. Let us know what you think by filling out this short two-page questionnaire. Little …