We are proud to offer the UK’s only orcharding Certificate. This exciting course (known as CICO) will teach you everything you need to know about managing healthy, productive community orchards and it’s taught by our team of orcharding experts. We run this course over several months, giving you the opportunity to learn seasonally-appropriate skills, including:
- Tree planting
- Grafting
- Pruning
- Biodiversity, pests, & diseases
- Site survey and orchard design
- Soil science and boosting soil fertility
- Caring for old orchards & veteran trees
- Identifying fruit trees and apple varieties
- Managing orchards for biodiversity and productivity
- Effective group work
As well as attending several practical face to face days, you will have access to our brilliant training platform. This has 26 interactive quizzes, 45 brilliant videos and 33 pieces of online reading material that you won’t find anywhere else. Our tutors are experienced and will support you through the course, leaving you feeling empowered and knowledgeable. The course is regulated by Crossfields Institute.
To register your interest in our other upcoming courses, contact Sarah.
To gain the CICO qualification (level 6 in Scotland and level 3 in the UK) you need to pass 3 units. Courses offering units 1, 2 and 3 are more focussed on veteran orchard management. Courses offering units 1, 2 and 4 are more focussed on community orchard design. However, you will have access to all our resources.
- Units 1 and 2 Orchard history; plant botany, physiology and processes; tree planting; tree identification; orchard management; biodiversity; soil science; soil fertility; pests and diseases; formative and maintenance pruning; grafting; effective group management.
- Unit 3 Veteran tree evaluation and management; biodiversity surveys; apple identification; taxonomy; restorative pruning.
- Unit 4 summer pruning; summer grafting; forest gardening; surveying land; new orchard design.
Learning is assessed via written tests, presentations, reports and demonstrations. We can accept alternative forms of assessment.
Fantastic feedback
“I’ve done a lot of courses and CICO is the best course I’ve done by far.”
“The course has been brilliantly crafted with each module flowing organically into the next, building on knowledge learnt. Listening to the presentations with orchard birdsong, I can feel myself relaxing.”
“There is a real sense of community and support within our group of teachers and students alike, something I’ve found invaluable.”
“Fascinating and inspirational from the start… I didn’t want the course to end!”
“The CICO course book is clear, well-edited and humorous, with a lot of well-presented and detailed information.”
“I gained a lot of understanding, as well as the techniques and knowledge to design a resilient food landscape in the midst of ongoing global warming… It gives me hope for the future.”
“I’m loving it. Learning so much that I can action straight away on our community orchard.”
Internal tutors
Most of the course is taught by members of The Orchard Project team: Daniella Levene, Jo Homan, Lewis McNeill, Kate Davies, Lizzy Pegler and Witchhazel Wildwood. Jo Homan developed the course and is the main point of contact for students in London; Witchhazel Wildwood is the main point of contact for students in Wales and Bristol.
“Lewis is excellent! Enthusiasm shines through, patient and incredibly knowledgable. Kept us focused by mixing activities.”
“I love how Jo is so excited about what she does and is so knowledgeable. Always really clear, approachable, well informed and easy going.”
External tutors for CICO
Alan Carter
Alan is a trained forester and compulsive gardener, so it was natural that he would be drawn to forest gardening. He has experimented with adapting the technique to cool climates (north east Scotland) and small spaces (his allotment) for over 30 years. He shares his findings through his website (foodforest.garden), courses and more recently his book, A Food Forest In Your Garden. When not in his allotment he works for the charity Reforesting Scotland.
Alex Reuer
Alex is an orchardist and arboriculturist with a background in permaculture design. After working in human rights translation for the best part of a decade, she took a permaculture course with Shift Bristol in 2016, somewhat unprepared for the keen interest in herbal medicine, tree care and forest gardening it would spark. This eventually led her to complete the CICO Bristol course in 2024, followed by a qualification in arboriculture. She runs a pedal-powered tree care business and works as a freelance consultant for The Orchard Project. Her particular passion is forest gardening in urban areas and how we can inspire and equip people to create truly resilient and nourishing spaces right within our cities.
Caroline Cupitt
Caroline is a freelance tree care specialist, who has been working in orchards for over 20 years. She works as a tutor and assessor for The Orchard Project, as well as supporting a number of community orchards in SE London. More recently she has also become involved in the planting and care of street and park trees as part of plans to increase London’s tree canopy. She is passionate about the benefits trees bring to our cities, connecting communities to nature and cooling our streets.
Daniella and Caroline are skilled and knowledgeable teachers. This was the best day so far!
Cath Palgrave
Cath is a graduate of the first ever CICO course which enabled her to help manage community orchards and forest gardens in Birmingham. She has a background in teaching and is passionate about helping others understand nature around them, especially in an urban environment, and how to care for it. An advocate for permaculture, she implements this in her community work as well as showcasing it at festivals. She is a keen cyclist and her other work is encouraging people to cycle for transport (including carrying all the tools needed to tend orchards on her bike!) with her company Cog Nation CIC. She has completed the Orchard Consultant Development Program with The Orchard Project as well as being an assessor for their online courses.
Dora Young
Dora is a CICO Wales 2023 graduate with a background in permaculture design and environmental justice research. These studies, alongside time spent contributing to several regenerative community projects in Europe, have solidified her belief in orchards, food forests and gardens as crucial sites for thriving people and nature. Her final CICO design was for a new food forest at Brithdir Mawr, Wales’ oldest land-based community, and was applied by Brithdir’s members in October 2023. She currently works in the environmental policy sector, is a freelance educator for the Orchard Project, and volunteers on Bristol’s city farms whenever she can. Her interests are orcharding for biodiversity and climate resilience, and inclusive group processes.
Jonny Joseland
After falling in love with the concept of Forest Gardening in 2020 during the formative years of the Welcome Garden, Jonny has pursued interest in sustainable and ecologically balanced methods of producing food, medicine and a broad variety of materials that the land can provide. He graduated from CICO11 in 2023, and then spent a year as fruit production trainee at Organiclea in 2024. Continuing to practice and share these ways of growing at the Welcome Garden and at Community Apothecary’s medicinal forest garden, and also weaving these threads into his work as a freelance gardener in private gardens, Jonny is keen to realise the potential for a more circular, holistic and ultimately fair way of life in the city (and beyond).
Ken Logan
Ken is a keen gardener who is reaping the benefits of working with nature. After 25 years in corporate business life, the fresh new challenges of day to day planting, growing and cultivating are mentally stimulating and physically invigorating. Following a career involved in environmental sustainability he decided to begin a new chapter to achieve his dream to create and make craft cider. The first port of call was to complete the CICO course in 2023/24 and then to start planting his own orchard of traditional cider apple trees, near to his home in Bristol. You can find more about his journey so far on this link: https://www.theorchardproject.org.uk/stories/ken/
Konni Deppe
Konni is a freelance community gardener and orchardist in Luton who is passionate about locally grown food and helping people rediscover the fruit trees in their back gardens. After a 20-year career in hospitality and digital communication with a sideline as a jazz singer, she decided she needed to spend more time out in nature. Konni caught the orchard bug in 2020, after taking on community gardening project Edible High Town. In 2022, she started the Luton Orchards project, to research the town’s historical orchards. She works to promote better care of the region’s existing fruit trees and helps people appreciate them for their biodiversity, heritage and community value. Konni graduated from CICO in 2024.
Mirjam Johansson
Mirjam is a trained horticultural therapy practitioner based at Forest Farm Peace Garden. She looks after the orchard and forest garden there as well as the Forest Garden at Edible Landscapes in Finsbury Park. Her journey into community growing began in 2009 upon moving to England, rooted in her experience of being a member of a rural community supporting homeless refugees. A 2021 CICO graduate, Mirjam loves hunting for unusual edible plants and designing resilient systems. She is dedicated to reducing and reusing waste, seeking solutions that actively nurture the community and the environment.
Both Sue and Miriam are excellent teachers, listeners & communicators. Very interesting and engaging.
Russell Miller
Russel’s main interests are: trees, beetles, bees, fungi, social justice and problem solving. Having worked for 14 years as a litigation solicitor, he left the legal profession to be closer to nature. He helped set up The Orchard Project and is also involved in Trees for Life in Scotland. In addition, he runs The Tree Musketeers, a Hackney-based volunteer group which plants and maintains trees. You can read an interview with them here. Russell established and chairs the Abney Park Cemetery Nature Reserve group, and also chairs the Ancient Tree Forum.
A fantastic teacher. So much knowledge is shared. Russell is a walking encyclopaedia.
Sue Wates
Towards the end of a career working and teaching in healthcare, Sue decided to spend more time outside. A lifelong learner, she undertook the RHS Diploma, courses in Social Therapeutic Horticulture with Thrive and feels very fortunate to have undertaken the CICO course which she loved. Sue now combines her interest in, and respect for, flora and fauna with the knowledge and experience gained in the NHS to inclusively connect people with the health and well-being benefits of nature through volunteering, freelancing and teaching in various orchards, community and school garden settings.
Thanusan Gunabalasingham
Than is a freelance veganic horticultural tutor, forest gardener, forager and all round plant enthusiast. He currently tutors on the Certificate in Community Orcharding courses. Having worked for some years in food policy and sustainability research, his work is now focussed on creating and teaching about resilient food systems. He also teaches and delivers workshops with OrganicLea, Nourish the Wild and other community food growing organisations. Most of all he is passionate about indigenous earth wisdom, restoring wild spaces and creating edible landscapes that nourish all beings.
Than is inspiring. I loved how holistic the teachings was e.g. came from all angles of activism, ancestry, folklore, science, community. Very talented teacher!”
Tom Adams
Working as an orchardist since 2001, Tom has specialist knowledge in old and local apple varieties. His work includes designing and planting new orchards, carrying out orchard surveys, orchard restoration, rescue work* and running a fruit tree nursery. As well as a deep knowledge in apple-care, Tom has well-honed practical skills in grafting, pruning and green woodworking. He runs workshops for the likes of The National Trust, Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, and local community orchards. Here he is being interviewed by the Telegraph. *’Rescue work’ means propagating trees whose variety can’t be immediately identified or is known to be rare.
If you want to be kept updated about our courses, please contact Sarah Mason, our Training Co-ordinator.
To find out about future courses please see our Events section. You may also like to read our blog, Diary of a CICO Student, a journal of one of our graduates during her year of study.