We are planting an orchard!

We are excited to announce our plans to create a new community orchard here at Polcoombe this winter and we’d love for you to get involved.

There are so many great reasons to plant orchards;

• Orchards can support a wide variety of wildlife including insects, birds, bees and bats
• They offer a wonderful way for communities to come together and produce local, seasonal food and drink
• Trees act as carbon sinks; absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide thereby helping us in our efforts to address the issue of global climate change

With all of this in mind, we have decided to plant an orchard of 200 fruit trees, comprising apples, pears, plums, cherries, quince and medlars.  We will be including lots of local heritage varieties including Cornish Honeypinnick, Pig’s Snout, Tregonna King, Collogett Pippin and Duke of Cornwall. 

We would love for you to join us on the land on Saturday the 25th Jan and be part of this exciting new project by helping us plant the fruit trees.

Bring your friends and family, your winter woollies and wellies and make sure you’ve some snacks and liquid refreshments. Oh and we’d be really grateful if you brought a shovel too! At the end of the day, we’ll strike up a fire and serve up some hot delicious food and relax after a job well done.

So we can cater for you, let us know you’re coming by filling in the participation form below.

As we watch the orchard grow, we hope it will be as beneficial to the wildlife as it will be for the local community, as we come together to harvest it’s bounty in the coming years. There’s huge scope for the project and we’re excited to talk to you about the many ways the produce could serve the local community.  There’s skills to be learned making preserves, jams and juices and who knows, it could be the start of a Polcoombe cider press!

So come on down for the day, get your hands in the dirt and see what ideas we can grow between us. And if you’re interested in donating to the project we’d love to hear from you – info@polcoombe.co.uk  

If you are interested in learning more about Traditional orchards and their role in communities then take a look at Common ground’s website.  They are a charity who have been campaigning to preserve and protect our orchards for nearly 30 years.

https://www.commonground.org.uk/archive/orchards/