Fruit trees planted from Cornwall to Scotland.

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 last 10 years revealed that 90% of traditional orchards have been lost since the 1950s. The future of biodiversity-rich traditional orchards depends on the conservation of these valuable habitat sites. 45% of the remaining orchards surveyed in England and 35% of orchards in Wales were found to be in declining condition as a habitat and by far the most common reason for this is lack of replacement tree replanting, meaning these remaining old orchards will quickly disappear unless action is taken.  Old trees with veteran features such as rot holes provide the best available habitats in an orchard, but only planting new trees will secure the future years of orchard wildlife.

Thank you to everyone who applied for the grants and to Great British Trees for putting together and sending all the grafting kits.