Orchard Revival

Scotland's charity for traditional orchards

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

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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 the National Orchard Inventory for Scotland.

Other speakers include:

David Atkinson, Falkland Estate

Roger Humphry, Carse of Gowrie Group

Andrew Lear, Appletreeman

Colin Wren, National Trust for Scotland

The day includes talks, a light lunch, and guided walks of the orchard at Megginch, which comprise over 1,400 trees in the two National Collections housed in the Orchard, led by owner Catherine Drummond-Herdman.

COST: £30.00 – SGLH Members / £40.00 – Non-members.

BOOKING: The study day poster (below) includes payment details. The deadline for booking is 11 October 2024.

BBC Radio Scotland piece on Orchard Inventory

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The National Orchard Inventory for Scotland featured on Good Morning Scotland

Bill Whiteford interviewed Crispin (Inventory Coordinator) and then Bill along with Isabel Fraser had a discussion with Kate Holl (SNH, funder), Sue Pomeroy (Local Facilitator for the Inventory in the West Highlands), and Ron Gillies (Cairn o’Mhor Winery).

Here’s the whole 29 minute piece broadcast on 7th October 2018. More recent posts have selected excerpts.

 

Or download it here
Orchard Inventory on BBC Radio Scotland 7oct18

Audio recording copyright BBC 2018

What to do with old variety pears ? Make a yummy snack

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old variety Hessle pears to yummy snack

old variety Hessle pears to yummy snack


What to do with those old variety pears that tend to be left on the tree ? Use them – they are fantastic! Varieties like Hessle, which have a small fruit, but there are a lot of them on a tree. Pick them and dry them in the pear equivalent of apple rings. Only they aren’t a ring as they don’t need coring.

Picking time is crucial: Picking the old varieties of pear at the right time is a trick. Don’t wait for them to be ‘ripe’ as you would a more modern variety of table pear. If you wait, the centre will typically be rotten. Pick before that stage when they have become sweet but are still crunchy.

Just slice them up (about 5mm thick slices). The picture shows a dehydrator rack (which is essentially a low temp fan oven) but you can do this in your own electric fan oven at its lowest temp, or on a cake rack over a fire or radiator. It takes about 12 hours in a dehydrator/oven, longer with other methods.

Once dry, put in an airtight jar and they will last for months – but only if you hide the jar or lock it. Otherwise they only last a few weeks because they are so bloomin’ tasty !

Sleuthing for orchards in the Carse of Gowrie

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Fruit map

By Kaska Hempel

Since early September I have been out in the field again, getting my teeth into the orchard surveys (and their lovely fruit) around the Carse of Gowrie and Perth. This autumn, Orchard Revival has partnered up with Tay Landscape Partnership, and Carse of Gowrie Group to make sure that the current condition of this historically important fruit growing area is well documented in the National Orchard Inventory for Scotland.

Surveys of the Carse of Gowrie in 2007 and 2010 showed that its previously extensive orchards largely have now disappeared after the local top fruit industry had collapsed in 1960s due to competition from fruit imports. But they also identified several sites where, with a little effort, at least some of this important local orchard heritage could be revived (download the full report here – PDF). We are very keen to see how these sites are doing now and have a look at any new arrivals. We also have our eye on the foothills North of the Carse, as well as Perth itself where records are very thin on the ground. The city must be bursting at the seams with new orchards after 100s of fruit trees were planted across its green spaces for the Perth 800 celebrations in 2010. It is important that we capture all this fruity abundance for posterity!

I wouldn’t want to keep all this exciting work all to myself though – I would be delighted if you could join me as a volunteer! Get in touch via email animateur@scotlandthefruit.org.uk or call me on 0744 623 1073. All survey training will be provided in September and early October.

Do you have five or more fruit trees? Then you are an orchard keeper! Help us by making sure that your own orchard is included in the Inventory – it’s as simple as filling in this online form. You can also tell us about any orchards in your neighbourhood.

This weekend you will also have a wonderful opportunity to explore a couple of the Carse’s most impressive historical orchards with a whole family. Tay Landscape Partnership is putting on a Fruit Festival at Muirhouses orchard on Saturday 30th of September. Orchard Revival will have a stall at the Festival so please come and say hello. And the Megginch Castle orchard opens to visitors on the 1st of October as part of the Patrick Matthew Memorial Weekend, organised by the Carse of Gowrie Sustainability Group.

In the meantime, I will leave you with a couple of snapshots from my recent outings. I hope it whets your appetite for local orchard sleuthing!

Elcho castle – young orchard with important collection of local apple varieties

Elcho castle orchardI chose a real treat for my first survey this autumn – the orchard at the Historic Scotland’s Elcho Castle. Although there is no longer any sign of the extensive orchard visible on maps from mid-1800s, the castle’s 1999 planting of over 90 fruit trees keeps the memory of this heritage well alive. The majority of the apple, plum and pear trees are still there, looking healthy and lush and laden with plenty of fruit. It’s definitely worth a visit – and since the visitor’s centre also provides a guide, it’s also a great way to get to know your local heritage apple varieties.

West Oaks – historical field orchard with stately old pears

West Oaks field orchardWest Oaks orchard was a treat from another time. It is a field orchard full of beautiful old pear and apple trees – in its heyday Carse of Gowrie was full of them. The old pears are still very productive and you can see a number of varieties there which you will never encounter in the shops, including the Willowgate sausage pear, unque to the Carse area. Although the orchard floor is overgrown with weeds, there has been some replanting done recently to try to preserve this wonderful hidden gem. Hopefully it will survive another couple of hundred years! The orchard is located along a walking path between Willowgate activity centre and Perth so you can visit it for yourself.

Branklin Gardens – Perth’s vanishing orchard glory

Branklyn Garden cakesNational Trust for Scotland’s Branklin Garden was, as always, a pleasure to visit with its wonderful alpine plant collection and truly delicious cakes. But not many people know that it also boasts a beautifully preserved veteran pear tree, the only survivor from the time when the site was a part of a productive Orchardbank market garden. This and other gardens at the foot of Kinnoul Hill used to supply Perth with fresh produce during 1800s. A few elderly pear and apple trees, scattered around the private gardens and hospital car parks, are the only remaining evidence of this productive past.

South Lanarkshire survey report maps future orchard revival in the historic fruit basket of Scotland and beyond

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Written by Kaska Hempel, Orchard Revival, Orchard Animateur for National Orchard Inventory for Scotland, and Duncan Arthur, Clyde Valley Orchards Cooperative Limited (CVOC), Local Facilitator for National Orchard Inventory for Scotland (originally published on Clyde and Avon Valley Landscape Partnership website here)

A photo of apple blossom

As orchards across Scotland burst into spring blossom, we at Orchard Revival are rather bursting with excitement about the publication of the report on orchard surveys in South Lanarkshire.

We are excited because the report shows that the Historic Fruit Basket of Scotland in Clyde Valley remains Scotland’s biggest and most concentrated traditional orchard area despite significant decline since its heyday, and that there is much interest and a real potential for their revival.

But we are also excited because as the first in a local area report series for the National Orchard Inventory for Scotland, the report marks a milestone in our nationwide Scottish Natural Heritage-funded project which started in 2013.

With over half of Scottish traditional orchards surveyed to date, the project is well on the way to creating a comprehensive orchard inventory for the nation, first in over a century. We believe that knowing the location, condition and use of orchards on the ground will help address issues linked to the decline of traditional orchards over the last four decades and create a strong foundation for their revival Scotland-wide.

But the information itself has little chance of creating a sustainable orchard revival. For this you need local people and organisations with interest in and knowledge of local orchard heritage who will take action on the ground. In order to foster this, since 2015 Orchard Revival has collaboratively partnered with local group to carry fieldwork for orchard surveys and to receive a copy of their data. We want knowledge to be retained locally so that capacity is built and a sense of ownership and interest in local orchards is strongly established. Building on this idea, in addition to a national report, we are currently producing 12 local area reports is to make results relevant to local organisations and local people.

Our first report from South Lanarkshire is a result of collaboration between Orchard Revival and Clyde Valley Orchards Cooperative Limited (CVOC) with support from the Heritage Lottery funding through Clyde and Avon Valley Landscape Partnership (CAVLP). Both organisations have already been working towards restoring local orchard heritage.

Duncan Arthur, director of CVOC, took on Local Facilitator role to coordinate local volunteer team and managed to complete an impressive 215 site surveys in the area, amounting to 150 volunteer hours.

It was not all just hard work and Duncan’s volunteers enjoyed learning how to tell their pears from their plums and exploring the local Clyde Valley heritage. Here is a lovely story from one of them:

“[…] Always game for a new challenge I signed up to become a volunteer to survey fruit orchards in South Lanarkshire. I met up with Duncan, the local co-ordinator, who guided me through what was required and helped me know ‘my pears from my plums’ with a mini tutorial in his own orchard. Those damsons were so tasty!

[…] Now all my surveys have been done and I have hung up my hi-vis vest. Most of all I enjoyed hearing stories of how fruit farming in the Clyde Valley used to be: what went to the jam factories; how many there were of these in the area; were turnips really used; how the fruit once picked had to be taken same day to the train for 5pm to get transported to England overnight with no refrigerated storage like today. I loved exploring little roads around Nemphlar, Crossford and Braidwood, and hearing why one house was named ‘doon field’. These stories helped make my field trips interesting and I was reminded of the Linmill stories in Scots that my Dad used to love reading out to us. So I dug out his ex-library book (by Robert McLellan) and enjoyed rereading of the ‘Linmill fruit ferm hauf wey atween Kirkfieldank and Hazelbank’ where this wee lad spent his holidays with his ‘grannie and granfaither who bade in Linmill’.

Tales of another life. Our heritage!”

You can explore the results of all this hard work in the CAVLP online museum here, along with other items items on the rich local orchard heritage. Another 11 area reports and a national report will be released over the next few months via the Orchard Revival website here.

So – will all this data bring the local orchard revival in the South Lanarkshire that we’d all hoped for? Duncan certainly seems to think so:

“The opportunity to bring South Lanarkshire’s Orchard Survey “in house” has provided a wealth of information for Clyde Valley Orchards Cooperative Ltd. As well as identifying a host of potential orchard sites, it has allowed us to make contact with the owners of these sites and enter into a dialogue about the work we are doing in the area. As a direct result of the survey project we have opened up around 20 locations who are willing to allow their fruit to be used as part of our juicing operation which allows us to build funds for future planting projects.

In the longer term the outputs of the survey will also allow us to construct funding applications based on factual evidence, talk more knowledgeably to the wider community about their horticultural heritage and further engage volunteers for future orchard projects.”

It looks like Clyde Valley will be enjoying orchard blossom and its fruit long into the future!

Scottish Orchard Inventory needs your help with field surveys

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Even the very young can join in! Here is Emma setting off for an orchard survey with her daughter.
We encounter some amazing trees and gardens!
PLANT survey volunteers at the Tayport Community Garden
Surveying can be fun for the whole family – young CLEAR Buckhaven surveyor in South East Fife (mum behind the camera;)

The Scottish orchard fruit season is in full swing just now – and along with it, our Autumn orchard surveys for the National Orchard Inventory for Scotland. It is a perfect time to get out in the field – the fruit on the trees makes is easy to tell your apples from your pears, and there is a good chance that you will get some to take home with you!

Do you think you may fancy joining in the fun? Our local collaborating organisations in the following areas are looking for additional survey volunteers right now:

You can put your name down for any of these areas through an online volunteer sign up form here. Full description of what is involved in becoming a surveyor can be downloaded from here (PDF).

We think it is a rather exciting way to get to know your local area and meet some lovely orchard keepers – and some very interesting trees! Survey volunteers tend to agree – here is they said about what they enjoyed the most about taking part in the surveys:

I’ve got so much more out of the survey than I ever could of imagined. Apart from discovering small pockets of countryside hitherto unexplored or driven past we have been lucky enough to meet a host of interesting and interested people with huge insights into local history and land use. The data entry is really not difficult I can only say positive thing about the survey and am so glad I signed up.

Cath, Clyde Valley Orchard Coop

I joined the Orchard Survey as a coordinator not expecting to do any surveying but as it turns out I have been able to go out into the field and discover some amazing orchards tucked away where you would never know they existed and have visited some grand properties that go with them too. It just shows you how much fruit there is growing in our country and a lot of it being unused, happily a lot of it is being used.

Nice to do something useful environmentally, fun to do with the kids.

Volunteer in the survey pilot in the Borders

Carse of Gowrie Orchards group starts #ORInventory surveys this autumn

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A photo of Gavin under a pear tree

Gavin about to don his bee-keeping suit under an ancient pear tree at Megginch

UPDATE 27 Sep 2017: Please note that as of September 2017 a new local facilitator has been appointed to coordinate surveys in this area. For details please see here.

Crispin was over to Megginch Castle near Errol recently to meet with the Local Facilitation team of Gavin Ramsay and owner Catherine Drummond-Herdman of Carse of Gowrie Orchards (previously known as Carse of Gowrie Group‘s Historic Orchard Forum).  We spent some time reviewing the process and organisation aspects of carrying out the Orchard Inventory in the area. That area stretches right around the Tay from Invergowrie to Perth and then back down to Abernethy and the borders of Newburgh in Fife. The extent of the area was indicated by the Tay Landscape Partnership who we’ve been collaborating with and who are co-funding the local fieldwork.

After our meeting in the castle kitchen, Crispin and Gavin had a walk around the orchard. Gavin to look over some of his hives, and Crispin to see the progress on Catherine’s great restoration project – replanting hundreds of fruit trees.  It really looked fantastic, and the plums tasted good!

Similarly to the Clyde Valley, Carse of Gowrie is one of the historically important areas for traditional orchards in Scotland and it would be wonderful to see it come back to life in due course. You can read more about history of their orchards in Crispin’s paper ‘Ancient Orchards beside the River Tay’ (PDF 900kb).

Historic Orchard Forum will be starting their surveys very soon so if you would like to volunteer, contact Gavin via email at gavinramsay@btinternet.com or register your interest using our online form here.

Signs of orchard revival in the Fruit Basket of Scotland

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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.

Help Highland orchards get on the map

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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.

Orchard Gathering 2014 announced

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Orchard banner

 

How do we celebrate and grow the orchard movement in Scotland as part of the local food revolution?

Click here to book now on Eventbrite

You are cordially invited to take part in the first Orchard Gathering on Friday 7th November. This will be an open event calling people together from across Scotland who are passionate about orchard trees, their fruits (and nuts), and how we strengthen the culture, knowledge and skills of keeping them. We believe the following things will happen at the event:

  • sharing experiences and knowledge
  • building energy and enthusing folk
  • making new connections and sparking new ideas
  • working together to further the orchard movement
  • eating good food, having a great time

These are exciting yet demanding times. All over the country, old orchards are waking up and new ones are being planted, yet at the same time the supermarkets retain their stifling globalised influence: despite the apple being Scotland’s favourite fruit, our shop shelves are bare of Scottish-grown apples. But the orchard tree, and the apple in particular, has deep roots in our culture, and seems poised for a resurgence.

We will be using innovative participative leadership techniques to ensure that everybody present has a voice, and also harvesting the fruits of all the conversations as we go along, taking notes, photos and video that will be uploaded to a website of the event.

This is an event in two halves: discussion and celebration – you are invited to both. Once the purposeful, focussed daytime part is finished, we will move on to an cultural evening with music, storytelling, dinner, a play and ceilidh.

Tickets are by donation from £5 for the daytime and £5 for the evening (£2.50 unwaged).

Click here to book now on Eventbrite

This is a collaborative event hosted by Fife Diet, Orchard Research & Enterprise CIC and Forth Environment Link.  For up to date event info please visit any of the three websites:

PROPOSED PROGRAMME (to be finalised)

1000: Registration, tea, coffee, freshly pressed apple juice

1030: Welcome circle including an interactive map of Scotland’s orchards and update on the National Orchard Inventory.

1130: What has been achieved so far?

In this session we will explore and discuss what is happening across all sectors of orchard growing, generating the agenda on the day to fit the programme to the people.

1300: Lunch with practical demonstrations and stalls featuring:

  • Strategy meeting for National Orchard Inventory
  • Book launch of Apple Hunter’s Handbook by Fife Diet Seed Truck
  • Celebration of Forth Valley Orchards initiative
  • How to preserve your fruit
  • Toffee apple tree

1430: What is needed to help grow the orchard movement?

Gathering everyone together, we will use the World Cafe format to discuss how to grow and strengthen the orchard movement.

1600: Next Steps

What do we think are the key next steps? How much can you commit to making them happen? With a summary and closing speech by Fife Diet’s Mike Small.

1700: Day event closes

1730: Sit-down dinner with an orchard fruit theme.  With a welcome by Mrs Mash the Storytelling Cook.

1900: The Forgotten Orchard. A play for all ages by Eco-Drama. Followed by a tasting of all of Scotland’s apple varieties

2100 – 2230: Ceilidh with Hud Yer Wheesht ceilidh band, plus others – feel free to take a turn!

Click here to book now on Eventbrite

With thanks to players of People’s Postcode Lottery for the funding to make this happen. Forth Valley Orchards Initiative is funded by CSGN. Header photograph by Clementine Sandison.

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

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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