• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

The Orchard Project

Bringing orchards into the heart of urban communities

  • TOP Orchard Map
  • Donate or Plant A Tree
  • Become a member
  • About us
    • Contact us
    • Meet the team
    • Work for us
    • Volunteer for us
    • Our partners and funders
    • Corporate Partnerships
    • Charity information and Impact Report
  • What we do
  • News
  • Events
  • Blog
  • Guides and advice
  • Cider and Juice
    • Call for #AppleDonors 2020!
    • Volunteer
    • Stockists
    • Support Local Fox
Home » Benefits of orchards and fruit growing

Benefits of orchards and fruit growing

ladybirdIf you love orchards and the delicious fruit within them as much as we do, you may have never seriously asked yourself why we should plant and nurture orchards but it turns out there are lots of great reasons justifying orchards should you ever encounter an unbeliever.

Orchards have played an important role in communities for many centuries, providing a focal point, a gathering space, and a place where people and the rest of nature successfully work together to create abundant harvests, providing fresh fruit long before the time of global freight.

Along the way, many customs and traditions have developed, as have thousands of different variations on Malus domestica, our well known apple, each cultivar with its unique flavour, texture, use and story, linking people to place and heritage.

As orchards the isle over were grubbed up, unique varieties along with the skills used to produce them were lost. Now most of the world’s commercially grown apples all come from just four or five parent varieties. Luckily though, in recent years, community orchards have had a renaissance as people rediscover the benefits and pleasures of growing fresh fruit from trees.

Once a tree is established, it can provide a large yield of fruit year after year for decades, requiring little human input when compared to the growing, planting, weeding, watering, pest control involved in annual vegetables. As a deep-rooted, long-lived perennial, the tree has time to adapt to local conditions and be more resilient.

By working with nature, and not against her, we can create healthy, diverse and resilient systems, while reducing our impact on climate change and environmental degradation.

Orchards provide vital green spaces in our cities and towns, where people are encouraged to interact with nature either through becoming custodians of the trees or by simply being around them and enjoying their shade, beauty and fruit.

Some areas of our cities have become ‘no grow zones’ or ‘food deserts’: where fresh, quality fruit and vegetables are hard to find. Sedate lifestyles and poor diets have led to rising rates of diabetes and obesity. Fresh, nutritious fruit and the activity involved in growing and harvesting has to be part of the solution.

Orchards offer a space to learn from each other and nature, and a place in which training of traditional skills can occur, such as pruning and grafting. And a place for celebration of diversity, nourishing fruit and the trees that provide it. Whether wassailing, blossom day or apple day, the orchard offers much scope for celebration while at the same time helping us re-tune into the shifting seasons around us.

Orchards invite nature into the urban environment and provide a refuge in which it can flourish; in our schools, housing estates, parks and commons, improving human wellbeing and making our cities more pleasant places in which to live.

Arguably, community orchards have never been more important. They provide the setting for encounters between urbanites and the natural environment. They are where young and old, rich and poor of all backgrounds can roll up their sleeves and work together or put their hair down and enjoy the harvest.

So if you want cities that are sustainable, rich in biodiversity, socially cohesive and scrumptious, let’s get digging!

Become a member of The Orchard Project

Become a member

Do you believe that community orchards can be transformative? That they change places for the better and bring people together?

Become a member of The Orchard Project now

Filed Under: Uncategorised

Primary Sidebar

Guides and advice

  • Planning and designing an orchard
  • Pruning Veteran Trees
  • Choosing Apple Varieties to Plant
  • Making Leaf Mould
  • Planting your orchard
  • 10 Beneficial Predators to welcome in your orchard
  • Helping Young Trees Establish in Summer
  • Involving the community in your orchard
  • The Importance of Mulching
  • 10 Amazing Species that live in Orchards!
  • Benefits of orchards and fruit growing
  • Why are Orchards Priority Habitats?
  • Community Cider Making
  • Community Mapping
  • When Should You Pick Apples and Pears?
  • Community Apple Pressing
  • Primary School Activities
  • Primary School Lesson Plans
  • How to Graft Fruit Trees
  • Pruning apple trees
  • Contamination issues
  • Growing fruit in containers
  • Restoration of old orchards
  • Flowering and pollination
  • Pests and diseases
  • How to celebrate our orchard heritage
  • Recipes to use up a glut of delicious fruit
  • The orchard year: spring
  • The orchard year: summer
  • The orchard year: autumn
  • The orchard year: winter
  • Links and further resources

Footer

Bringing orchards into the heart of urban communities.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Company Number: 06902160
Charity Number: 1139952

The Orchard Project (Cause) Ltd.
Fourth Floor The Archives
Unit 10 High Cross Centre
1 Fountayne Road
London
N15 4BE

© 2021 The Orchard Project · All Rights Reserved · Privacy Policy · Site by Charity & Biscuits

Found this information useful?

Then why not sign up to our free, quarterly newsletter for more orchard tips, news and information on training workshops and events.

Sign Up

 

You can also help us to support more community

orchards and continue providing expertise

by becoming a Member of The Orchard Project.

               Read more