The seed was planted at Jen Berry’s funeral January 2023, to plant an orchard on the land in Jen’s memory.
Here she is receiving a commendation during the Tamsyn Imison award in 2019, which was given that year to Richard Woolnaugh.
With the changing climate and less rainfall in the summer, we plan to plant November 2023.
Here are your options if you’d like to contribute:
- Select and buy a fruit tree and plant it with us November
- Select and buy a fruit tree and give it to us to plant in November
- Give us £10 per tree for us to buy and plant in November
The trees we will plant will be native English varieties, and here’s a good list
Here are some places to visit to buy good orchard trees from
Hattens Farm Nursaries Metfield
Part of our Food Forest
The orchard would be part of a food forest – a mixed planting of trees, shrubs, vines, ground cover and roots/ fungi. Inspired by Marion Gaze: “Listening to Tim Spector talking about 30 foods a week in our diet, reawakened my ideas about it. Somewhere where children can taste 30 foods in one visit.. or at least learn about their use.”
A food forest, also called a forest garden, is a diverse planting of edible plants that attempts to mimic the ecosystems and patterns found in nature. Food forests are three dimensional designs, with life extending in all directions – up, down, and out.
Generally, we recognize seven layers of a forest garden – the overstory, the understory, the shrub layer, the herbaceous layer, the root layer, the ground cover layer, and the vine layer. Some also like to recognize the mycelial layer, layer eight (mushrooms). Using these layers, we can fit more plants in an area without causing failure due to competition.
Kaliwood 