Orchard Revival

Scotland's charity for traditional orchards

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You are here: Home / Archives for Orchard Inventory

Count your orchard in!

September 8, 2016 by pie&crumble

An image of the Count Our Orchard In flier

Do you (or your neighbour) have 5 or more fruit trees in your garden? Let us know about it and help with revival of our Scottish orchards!

Scotland’s orchards are an integral part of our heritage. But they’ve been in decline for decades, and we have already lost many if not most of them. We need to act now if they are not to disappear entirely. Luckily, there has been a resurgence of interest in traditional orchards in Scotland over the last 10 years or so, as lots of people are realising that the last of the orchards are in danger. In order to make firm plans for a long-term task of reviving Scotland’s traditional orchards we all need to know where the orchards are.

The National Orchard Inventory for Scotland is a Scottish National Heritage funded project which aims to map locations and determine the condition of all the orchards in Scotland. We have found over 1700 orchards so far but we now need your help to make sure we haven’t missed any.

Simply fill in this wee online form to make sure that your orchard is included in the big count:

https://www.orchardrevival.org.uk/inventory-scotland/count-our-orchard-in/

Filed Under: Orchard Inventory Tagged With: Count Your Orchard In, National Orchard Inventory for Scotland, Scottish National Orchard Inventory

Signs of orchard revival in the Fruit Basket of Scotland

August 24, 2016 by pie&crumble

A photo overlooking the orchard in a valley

We had a really exciting day visiting the Clyde Valley on the 11th August. The area was once known as the Fruit Basket of Scotland, and the National Orchard Inventory desk study (PDF 3Mb) identified it, together with the rest of the surrounding South Lanarkshire, as the Scottish orchard hotspot – with 210 orchard sites, covering 133 hectares.

Our excitement was not dampened by the heavy showers, nor by the sight of neglected fruit trees we spotted on our drive through the valley. After all, we were on the way to meet with the wonderful people who have been doing sterling work restoring the traditional orchard heritage in the area – the Clyde Valley Orchards Cooperative (CVOC, originally known as Clyde Valley Orchard Group) and the Clyde and Avon Valley Landscape Partnership (CAVLP).

Photo of Duncan and Crispin at a computer

First, we popped in to visit Duncan Arthur, a director of CVOC, to train him as our Local Facilitator for the Inventory field survey. The training was delivered overlooking his lovely orchard at Hazelbank, one of 15 or so recently restored by the group with help from CAVLP, including their pride and joy, Kirkfieldbank Community Orchard. It was great to see Duncan’s enthusiasm for the restoration of the orchards in the area, and we are very excited that participation in the Inventory will provide the group with useful information to better target their projects while also contributing to the national inventory data set. You can listen to Duncan speak about their work on BBC Radio Scotland’s “The Kitchen Cafe” programme here (his bit starts at 8 min 30 sec, available for the next 24 days).

If you are interested in helping out with the Inventory in South Lanarkshire, Duncan is recruiting field orchard mapping volunteers right now – more details here. Or you can simply pop in for a taste of Clyde Valley’s very own apple juice at the CVOC’s annual Fruit Day on the 1st of October.

A photo of Crispin, Ewan and Kirsten around a table

Next, we headed for another picturesque location, the heritage site of New Lanark, to meet with CAVLP project officers Kirsten and Ewan. CAVLP has been supporting the practical orchard restoration work by CVOC, including funding for planting of 1,000 new fruit trees across the Valley, orchard skills training and the recent contribution towards the Inventory project itself (more details here).

CAVLP are also running a wider heritage project – Capturing the Past – to “identify, record and celebrate the industrial, horticultural and agricultural heritage of the Clyde and Avon Valleys”. This encompasses the local fruit growing history and is recording local people’s fruit-inspired stories, songs and recipes. All of this wonderful history will be gathered in an online museum, including an entry documenting the rise, decline, and recent revival of the orchards in the area. We discussed how the data collected by Duncan and his volunteers would enhance these outputs, from producing maps of local orchards through time, to identifying interesting orchard tales for the area’s oral history project.

While we all wait for the virtual museum exhibits, which are planned to make an appearance around Christmas, you can get a real taste of area’s fruity heritage at CLAVLP’s “Tasting Through Time” workshops in September.

After seeing how the involvement with the Inventory is palpably helping local projects in Clyde Valley, we drove back home re-energised and buzzing with excitement about its potential to enhance orchard revival Scotland-wide.

Filed Under: Inventory Scotland, Orchard Inventory, Traditional Orchards Tagged With: Clyde and Avon Valley Landscape Partnership, Clyde Valley Orchard Cooperative Ltd, field survey, Fruit Basket of Scotland, Local Faciliator, Orchard Inventory, orchards

Help Highland orchards get on the map

July 26, 2016 by pie&crumble

A map of Isle of Eigg Community Orchard

A map of Isle of Eigg Community Orchard for our field volunteer information packs

We are putting final touches on the orchard maps for our local Orchard Inventory volunteers. Each one of 1741 Scottish orchards identified in the Inventory’s desk study has its own map which is used by a volunteer to verify its current location, size and condition during the field visit. Katherine Bellamy, our GIS guru, is working on the last few maps for the 129 of the Highland orchards right now. We asked her to pick a couple that caught her eye.

Community Orchard on Isle of Eigg, planted in 2010, is one of the youngest in the Highland and Island area. Despite its young age it has some fascinating history behind it. Since its community buy-out 19 years ago, the island has become world-famous in environmental and land-reform circles and the orchard seems to have been established as a part of the community initiative for the island to go green.

Photo of people planting trees in a brown field

Community planting the orchard on Eigg. There are more photos here. (By isleofeigg,CC BY-SA 2.0)

The orchard still seems to be in fine fettle today. How do we know? It regularly features on social media around May each year as one of the Highlands and Islands bluebell beauty spots!

Image of a flowering apple tree with bluebells flowering underneath

Eigg Orchard in May this year (By @EiggOrganic)

Another of Katherine’s favourites was an orchard at Letterewe Estate. It won her prize for the most remote mainland location as it can only be accessed by boat across Loch Maree. This one is much more mysterious. All we know about it is that it appears on the Ordnance Survey maps from 1860 and it was likely a part of the Estate’s walled garden at the time. This is quite exciting as it may still contain some very old fruit trees. But we won’t know for sure until somebody pays it a visit!

We need local field volunteers to verify the findings of our desk study by visiting orchard sites like these in the Highlands and elsewhere in Scotland. For the full list of the areas we need help with please, and instructions on how to get in touch, please see our previous post.

Filed Under: Inventory Scotland, Orchard Inventory Tagged With: #ORinventory, field volunteer, Highlands, Isle of Eigg, Isle of Eigg Community Orchard, Letterewe Estate, mapping, orchards, Scottish National Orchard Inventory

Orchard Animateur in position to help you get involved in Orchard Inventory

July 21, 2016 by pie&crumble

Image of Kaska smiling in front of her computerof

We are delighted to announce that Kaska Hempel has joined the Orchard Inventory project as an Orchard Animateur and Support Worker to help encourage and support our local collaborating groups. She is the first point of contact for any new local organisations or local facilitators who would like to get involved in the project this year. Look out for her regular project updates on our blog, Twitter (@Orchard Revival) and Facebook. We would love to help your organisation thrive so please let Kaska know if you have any orchard-related news or events you would like us to share.

We have some wonderful help from our collaborators over the past year and managed to survey over 300 orchards identified through our desktop study (PDF, 3MB) and add many more new orchards to the Inventory. But we still have a lot of white space on our map and still need some more help from local organisations, facilitators and volunteers to fill them in.

Would you or your organisation like to get involved in mapping of existing orchards in your area? We are particularly keen to recruit some new Local Facilitators in:

  • Dumfries and Galloway
  • Aberdeenshire (north including the City)
  • Edinburgh
  • Mid Lothian
  • East Lothian
  • Highland
  • Inverclyde
  • Renfrewshire
  • East Renfrewshire
  • Glasgow
  • East Dunbartonshire
  • West Dunbartonshire
  • Argyll & Bute
  • Highland
  • Comhairle nan Eilean Siar
  • Orkney
  • Shetland
  • Moray
  • Perthshire north of Dunkeld
  • Kinross-shire
  • Fife, west including Dunfermline

Get in touch by filling out an online form (see instructions here) or if you have any questions, email Kaska directly at animateur@scotlandthefruit.org and we can arrange for a chat.

Filed Under: Featured, Orchard Inventory Tagged With: Local Facilitators, mapping orchards, Orchard Animateur, Orchard Inventory, scotland

Job Opportunity: Orchard Animateur & Support Worker

May 17, 2016 by pie&crumble

SAYR0022 unnamed apples small
We’ve also got a great job opportunity for an enthusiastic person to help encourage and support local groups that are collaborating in the orchard inventory project. Its part-time, one day a week and runs for six months starting June.
Social media and some wordpress skills are needed too.
See Jobs page
Closing date 31st May 2016.

Filed Under: Orchard Inventory, Uncategorized Tagged With: job, opportunity, orchard, worker

Job Opportunity: GIS Operator

May 17, 2016 by pie&crumble

SLAN gmap
We have a great opportunity for a person with Geographical Information Systems skills, who would like to contribute to our great National Orchard Inventory project. Its a short term contract, 11 days of work on a specific task. You don’t have to be a top line expert, just relatively competent with MapInfo – we provide the system.
See Jobs page
Closing date 31st May 2016.

Filed Under: Orchard Inventory, Uncategorized Tagged With: gis, job, mapinfo, opportunity, orchard

Training for Orchard Surveys in the Ayrshires

September 1, 2015 by pie&crumble

Monday 24th August saw three new Local Facilitators meet up in Maybole, Ayrshire to participate in an afternoon of training the trainers.  The training was carried out in cooperation with Ayr-based Scottish Smallholders Association, who are our local ‘Collaborating Organisation’ for North Ayrshire, East Ayrshire, and South Ayrshire.  Local Facilitators are the people that organise and support volunteer surveyors in their area.

The training was part of the Field Verification phase of creating a National Orchard Inventory for Scotland.  The national project collaborates with local organisations so that knowledge is kept local and community organisations can be part of an orchard revival across Scotland.

Scottish Smallholders Association were successful in gaining Awards for All funding to carry out local work.  Nationally the project is funded by Scottish Natural Heritage.

Want to know what’s involved in being a volunteer – here’s a one page summary

If you are interested in volunteering in any of the Ayrshires, please email ssa@scotlandthefruit.org.uk

For all other areas, please use our volunteer form here

 

 

Filed Under: Network, Orchard Inventory Tagged With: ayrshire, inventory, scotlandthefruit, scottish_smallholders_association

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National Orchard Inventory for Scotland Talk at SLHG Pomology Day, 26 October 2024

September 9, 2024 By Hardpear

Crispin Hayes of Crispin Hayes’ Associates and Orchard Revival will be among the guest speakers at Scotland’s Garden & Landscape Heritage event , “Pomology Study Day: Scotland’s Orchards Past and Present “, on Saturday 26 October 2024 at Megginch Castle, Errol, Perth PH2 7SW, between 9.30am and 3.30pm. Crispin will be giving a talk about […]

National Orchard Inventory for Scotland Talk at SLHG Pomology Day, 26 October 2024

September 9, 2024 By Hardpear

Crispin Hayes of Crispin Hayes' Associates and Orchard Revival will be among the guest speakers at … [Read More...]

Police Scotland Advice for ‘Raids’ on Community Orchard Crops

August 16, 2024 By Hardpear

Bag of Bloody Ploughman apples and fruit picker Increasingly over the past few years, community … [Read More...]

“Pistils at Dawn” – Blossom Time Poetry Inspiration

April 24, 2024 By Hardpear

Blossom Day is nearly here, and to inspire people to celebrate this wonder of nature, James Crowden, … [Read More...]

Tags

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Tags

#ORinventory Apple Day apple wassail BBC blossom day Carse of Gowrie Christmas Clyde and Avon Valley Landscape Partnership Clyde Valley Orchards CW Hayes Associates fife diet forth valley orchards Fruit Festival fruit leather fruit tree wassail gathering heritage Highlands historic orchards inventory Jane Lewis job Local Facilitators National Orchard Inventory for Scotland opportunity orchard Orchard Inventory orchards orchard surveys pear pears and apples Perth remote orchards scotland scotlandthefruit Scottish National Orchard Inventory seasonal recipes South Lanarkshire survey area report using up a glut volunteers wassail wassailing songs Wester Ross WREN

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