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.

 

Pexhill Road, a long and winding lane leading from Macclesfield down to the Cheshire plane is often marks the start of our fruit picking expeditions. It is also home to our favourite fruit tree of all, the legendary Pexhill Pear. Standing alone in a paddock on the east side of the ridge overlooking the Peak district hills this remarkable tree although it looks mostly dead regularly produces over 200 or even 250kg of pears. The pears are firm, with a refined astringency found in old cooking pears that adds a unique tang to our heritage pear chutney.

At some point in the distant past the tree was probably struck by lightening, the trunk has split and now the two halfs turn round each other in a double helix, making the huge yields it still bears even more impressive. In around 2018 Bert took a graft from the tree and successfully raised two saplings, suspecting this could be an old lost variety, or just a single unique tree sprouted from a seed.

Since then new owners of the land have kindly fenced off one end of the field for us to plant a small orchard. On the fence line we have planted one Pexhill pear and two other extremely rare old pears. One we found in Evesham we refer to as the “cannon ball” pear as it is completely round, another hard old cooking pear, the original tree has now died. The final was a pear given to us by our friend Billy from Shropshire known as the “sugar pear”.

Within the orchard we have planted about a dozen apples mainly Lord Derby and Newton Wonder cooking apples from Cheshire and Derbyshire respectively, along with a selection of other old varieties. The apples and pears are all on vigorous rootstocks with the grass grazed by rarebreed Ryeland sheep.

 

Greenhayes Farm

We have known Phil Smallwood of Greenhayes farm near Middlewich in Cheshire for many years. His family have farmed at Greenhayes farm for three generations. Next to the farmhouse is the remains of an old orchard from which the fruit was supplied to Middlewich market in days gone by. The trees remaining are majestic pear trees over 20 foot tall of an extremely early variety that ripens at the end of July and two huge old Damson trees.

Phil is always keen to enhance and improve the hedgerows around his farm and in 2018 we planted two sections of damson hedge. The trees are now almost 10 foot tall and have started producing good crops in the last couple of years.

 

Bosley orchard

We have been developing an orchard at this site just above the village of Bosley a few miles south of Macclesfield for the last five years. The site is at 600 feet but faces south west so receives full sun most of the day with good fertile soil.

We have been planting plums, apples and pears here in stages with the first trees planted beginning to bear fruit. We have planted the second graft of the Pexhill Pear which is thriving along with Purple Pershore plums, damson and a wide range of cooking apples including a row of Cheshire varieties such as Lord Clyde, Lord Derby, Bee Bench and Millicent Barnes.

Before we began planting this site it was fallow for about 20 years. The result is a species rich grassland including plenty of thistle and a patch of nettle. Although the nettle and thistle make visiting the orchard slightly painful we are only cutting the vegetation back around the base of the trees. The result is a profusion of butterflies and other insects that hatch throughout the summer.

In the future as we have to access the trees to pick fruit we will cut back more of the vegetation but only in the late summer once the insect life has benefitted. This “hands off” approach to the management has turned into an interesting experiment into how an orchard can be managed to produce fruit whilst giving the maximum benefit to wildlife. 

 

Over the years we've also worked with community group on a range of tree planting projects here are some examples

 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.

 

Support our project by buying a tree-planting voucher!

How does it work?
You buy the voucher and we will plant the tree for you! Your donation will go towards planting a traditional Damson, Plum, Apple, Pear or wild elderberry. At the end of the tree planting season we will give you an overview of what trees we have planted and where and we will let you know about trees we have planted in places with public access.
So you will be the first to know about the foraging spots of the future!
For just £10 per tree you are already making the difference!