Preparation and Planting
The planting is in straight lines. Nearly a hundred trees were planted, grouped in a rather nice way. If you are picking stone fruit, then you want them all together, so your Marjorie’s Seedling plum is a neighbour of the Merryweather damson. With the apples, your eaters are together, like D’Arcy Spice and Kidd’s Orange Red, cookers such as Lord Stradbroke and Doctor Harvey are near neighbours, and so are the cider-makers – Dabinett and Dunkerton Late Sweet.
Our applications for support and sponsorship were greeted enthusiastically and we raised sufficient funds to get going - you can find out more about this stage in Supporters and Documents and Documentation.
Creating the orchard had three main stages: recovering and preparing the site, planning the orchard layout and selecting trees, and finally planting:
The field had to be cleared (the only time it was sprayed to deal with the most pernicious weeds), ploughed, and cultivated. We sowed it with a wild-flower meadow mix chosen for the local clay soil conditions to under-plant the trees and to encourage many kinds of insects. The ditches were dug out and hedges trimmed.
The layout had to include a wide variety of trees, the triangular shape of the field, proper spacing, incorporate a hut somewhere and a clearing in the centre, and have room to manage the meadow, ditches and hedges. A tree planting plan was drawn up and a wide selection of fruit and other trees, including traditional and modern varieties and many native to Suffolk, were ordered. Choosing the mix of trees and varieties of each type used all the team’s knowledge and experience and help from our nurseryman. The full list and a map of the trees and planting layout can be found here.
Severe winters slowed planting which was done several seasons: digging, firming in, staking, labelling, tying, fitting rabbit and deer guards and a good helping of mushroom compost. The weather at the end of 2009 severely delayed tree planting and the first batch of some 57 trees were not planted until March 2010. All survived this late planting and a subsequent very dry spell. The weather over the following year continued to be unhelpful and the remainder of the 80 trees planned were not planted until autumn 2010 and into 2011. By spring 2012 we had planted a rich mix of 92 trees, many old and local varieties, some specially grafted for this orchard.
42 apple trees, 8 nut trees, 2 cherries,
4 cider/crab apple, 10 damsons, 13 plums or gages, 6 pears, 2 quinces,
1 sorbus,
2 apricots, 1 mulberry …
…and a medlar
In addition to the trees, we installed new field gates and fencing and built our own oak benches to be installed at various places around the orchard. In addition, we bought and installed some fine oak seats from Orwell Mencap which were each engraved with the names of an apple tree. Meanwhile we worked on the restoration of a very old hut that was put into the orchard in September 2011.
