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:
- Dumfries and Galloway – South West Community Woodlands Trust
- Highlands – Transition Black Isle, West Ross Environmental Network and Nairn Orchard Group (we wrote about a sample of interesting orchards in the Highlands in an earlier post)
- Perthshire – Comrie Development Trust and Carse of Gowrie Group: Orchards (also known as Historic Orchard Forum)
- North East Fife – PLANT
- South East Fife – CLEAR Buckhaven
- North Aberdeenshire – we are still looking for the local collaborating organisation in this area – let us know if your group would like to get involved by filling our online form here.
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