Tree Planting

As we travelled, picking fruit from traditional orchards, we noticed the wildlife that thrives in these places and met wise characters with snippets of knowledge about the old ways of growing fruit. We couldn’t help but notice many of these last traditional orchards were in a sorry state with haggard trees on their last legs soon to be lost forever.  
We consider these orchards and hedgerows sacred, they sustained our ancestors and are a symbolic connection to historic traditions and folklore. They are a vital way of keeping our heritage alive, educating people about local food and most importantly creating habitats for wildlife and increasing our land’s biodiversity. We’re working to conserve traditional orchards and hedgerows so that future generations will be able to enjoy the simple pleasures of fruit picking. Since 2017 we’ve donated or planted over 1,000 fruit trees to schools, farms and community groups.
We believe valuable fruit can be grown alongside main crops, in hedgerows and small-scale traditional orchards. The rich habitats generated by productive orchards and hedgerows create food and refuge for the entire wild food chain. Diverse farms are more resilient economically and ecologically. We often forget that our capitalist system relies solely on the abundance of nature, which must be preserved so that humans can thrive.
Below are some examples of our tree planting projects.
 

We’ve planted so many trees with so many different groups over the years. Here are some examples of our favourite projects!

 Sugar Lane, Adlington

We planted 40 Damson trees in a new hedge accessible from a public right of way and planted around 60 wild cherry, hornbeam and elderflower from Forestry Commission surplus trees.

Paul Griffiths, Wrenbury

 Paul is committed environmentalist and we have assisted him replanting the orchard at his farm where only one tree remained. We have donated: 70 mixed plums including 35 Damson, 12 Purple Pershore Plum, 6 Jacobs Plum, three Greengage and one rare Magnum Bonum Plum and a mixture of 12 grafted traditional apple trees.

Phil Smallwood, Middlewich

Phil is a traditional farmer who has resisted many of the modern changes to farming he sees as unsustainable practices out of touch with the land. On his farm we have planted 65 Damson and Greengage trees in the hedgerows and have donated three grafted apple trees to replant in his orchard.

Gandey’s Circus

Our largest planting project to date, Carol Gandey runs a travelling circus from her base in rural Cheshire. In an unloved and unused field we have planted approximately 100 Damson and plum trees and eight grafted apple trees, mainly of the old Cheshire cooking variety Minshull Crab, once a popular variety in the North West.

Rogue planting in the wilds of the Mersey Valley, Manchester

We have donated dozens of damson, plum and sloe trees to the friends of Turns Moss who manage Turn’s Moss, a large area of playing fields and open park land in Chorlton, Manchester. We have also planted thirty Damson and plum in rough pasture on the flood plain of the river Mersey in Stretford, where the trees should provide fruit for the local community.

Lifestyle Centre Macclesfield

We’ve planted 15 Damson and Plum with the Lifestyle Centre Macclesfield where Birgit works with adults with learning difficulties. They have been developing a fruit and veg garden there and the guys are very keen growers who we love helping out!

Kings School, Macclesfield

We we’re kindly given the freedom to plant an unused part of the new school site, where we grafted apple trees, 12 damsons, and the beginnings of a wildlife hedge using 10 local elderflower from cuttings we propagated and 45 sloe saplings from an ancient hedge at Claremont farm.