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Historic Gardens 2010
BCD Special Report
costs for restoring or creating traditional
orchards. Grants from local councils,
government-sponsored programmes and
industry schemes like Biffaward (see Useful
Websites below) may also be available.
Natural England has produced a
series of technical information notes
providing advice on the management and
maintenance of traditional orchards which
can be downloaded from its website (see
Useful Websites below). These include
several specifically about formative,
maintenance and restorative pruning that
are essential reading for the uninitiated.
The orchard conservation
movement
For the past 50 years the acreage of
traditional orchards has been steadily
decreasing, with an estimated loss in area
of 60 per cent nationally since 1950, and
with some counties, such as Devon, seeing
losses of up to 90 per cent. Agricultural
intensification is the single greatest cause.
For commercial growers, traditional orchards
have long been economically unsustainable
since large trees require a lot of labour
to harvest from and prune and are less
productive per-hectare than bush trees.
Small traditional orchards are often
found in or near villages and towns, and
this has left them highly vulnerable to
development. An orchard identified on
maps as dating back to 1575 was replaced in
2007 by housing in the village of Bawdrip
on the Somerset Levels despite a decade
of campaigning from local people. More
recently, in the town of Chipping Campden,
Gloucestershire plans to replace an ancient
orchard with a car park have polarised local
opinion. Orchard sites are currently classified
as ‘agricultural land’ and so have only
limited legal protection from such schemes.
Generally, traditional orchards are
poorly represented among SSSI, National
Nature Reserve or Wildlife Trust sites.
There are a few notable exceptions such
as Lower House Farm, a Herefordshire
Wildlife Trust reserve and the Wyre
Forest SSSI in Worcestershire.
Charities and non-governmental
organisations have played a primary role in
mobilising a traditional orchard conservation
movement to address these threats. Common
Ground was an early pioneer, establishing
the Apple Day celebration in 1990, which has
steadily accumulated interest and is now a
nationwide event. Currently there are orchard
groups representing most of Britain, with
the common aim of promoting traditional
orchard heritage and knowledge. There are
also many community orchard projects in the
UK that involve groups of local volunteers
in the restoration, preservation or creation
of orchards. The orchards of Cleeve Prior in
Worcestershire were acquired and restored
by a locally established heritage trust, with
the fruit used to make Prior’s Tipple, a cider
that promotes the use of old orchards.
Despite this movement, traditional
orchards are still severely under-protected
by the law and conflicts between developers,
farmers and conservationists regularly occur.
Protection measures for threatened sites
involve the establishment of Tree Protection
Orders (TPOs) through local council tree
officers, combined with building a case
around the ecological, genetic, historical and
social importance of the site. A case study
for a successful campaign is the perry pear
orchard near Brockworth, Gloucestershire.
Information about the campaign is available
on the Gloucestershire Orchard Group
website (see Useful websites below).
Flagship species have been used by
various conservation groups to publicise
traditional orchard conservation with, for
example, Butterfly Conservation concerned
about declines in the mistletoe marble moth.
The People’s Trust for Endangered Species
recently undertook a national survey of
traditional orchard extent and condition,
with the noble chafer beetle as focus species.
In October 2008 the National Trust
and Natural England committed £536,000
to establishing a partnership project titled
‘Conserving and restoring traditional orchards
in England’, which has funded restoration
work, the creation of new orchards, and
surveying and training activities. It is
set to continue until March 2011.
Notes
1
Juniper and Mabberley, 2006
2
Loudon, 1844
3
French, 1982
4
Russell, 2007
5
Roach, 1985
6
Clifford and King, 2007
7
Smart and Winnall, 2006
Recommended Reading
S Clifford and A King,
The Apple Source Book
,
Hodder and Stoughton, London, 2007
RK French,
The History and Virtues of Cyder
,
Robert Hale Ltd, London, 1982
BE Juniper and DJ Mabberley,
The
Story of the Apple
, Timber Press Inc,
Portland, Oregon, USA, 2006
JC Loudon,
Arboretum et Fructicetum
Britannicum
,
Longman, Brown, Green,
and Longmans, London, 1844
LC Luckwill and A Pollard,
Perry Pears
, the
National Fruit and Cider Institute and
the University of Bristol, Bristol, 1963
M Lush et al, ‘Biodiversity studies
of six traditional orchards in
England’,
Natural England Research
Reports
, Number 025, 2009
FA Roach,
Cultivated Fruits of Britain
,
Blackwell, Oxford, 1985
J Russell,
Man-made Eden: Historic Orchards
in Somerset and Gloucestershire
,
Redcliffe Press Ltd, Bristol, 2007
MJ Smart and RA Winnall (eds), ‘The
biodiversity of three traditional
orchards within the Wyre Forest SSSI
in Worcestershire: a survey by the
Wyre Forest Study Group’,
English
Nature Research Reports
, No 707, 2006
C Wedge, ‘Traditional Orchards: A
Summary’,
Natural England Technical
Information Notes
, Number 012, 2007
Useful Websites
Biffaward
Charingworth Orchard Trust www.
Common Ground
Gloucestershire Orchard Group www.
Natural England
Orchard Network
People’s Trust for Endangered
Species
Henry Johnson
set up the Charingworth
Orchard Trust in 2008 to conserve threatened
traditional orchards in Gloucestershire. He
studied ecology on the Natural Sciences Tripos
at Cambridge University and currently works
part-time in the market garden at Daylesford
Organic near Kingham, Gloucestershire.
Email
.
Glossary
Bryophytes
spore-producing non-vascular land
plants that include the mosses,
liverworts and hornworts
Dwarfing rootstock
non-vigorous root system used
to ensure the trees resulting
from grafting stay small (1–3m
tall at maturity) and are
therefore easier to manage
Grafting
method of vegetative propagation
where tissue from one plant (a
scion) is attached to the root
system of another plant (a
rootstock, usually of the same
species) in order to replicate the
variety of the scion. The tissues
of the two parts then grow
together producing one tree that
is genetically two different plants
Improved pasture
semi-natural grassland that has had
fertilizer and/or herbicides applied
to it to increase yields resulting
in reduced sward diversity
Standard tree
tree grown on a vigorous rootstock
that has a crown high enough to
allow animals to graze beneath
without them reaching the branches
Vigorous rootstock
Root system used to ensure the
trees resulting from grafting grow
into half-standards or standards
(3–10m tall at maturity)