The orchard allotment plot that I help look after is triangular in shape and slopes down quite sharply from the row of five apples and medlar beside the road to the quince at the bottom end.
The site is also quite exposed, leading to some of the trees developing in a rather wind-blown manner. This exposure does mean that the trees receive the maximum benefit of available sunlight throughout the day, with hardly any shading, even from the neighbouring veteran bullace (seen in the pic below, bottom right).
The plot was cleared and prepared over the winter of 2017-18 by myself and Mike (a fellow Langley Allotments plot-holder) and then we planted the initial 20 trees in January 2018. An existing strip of fruit bushes belonging to Christine, the third member of our group of orchardeers, was retained and provides additional lures for pollinating insects.
This is the current layout of the orchard. Click on any tree-number (i.e. Ma1) for information and record-keeping on that particular tree.
| Cy1 Quince ‘Meeche’s Prolific’ |
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| Pr4 Cherry ‘Morello’ |
Py2 Pear ‘Nouveau Poiteau’ |
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| Py3 Pear ‘Double de Guerre’ |
Py4 Pear ‘Doyenne d’ete’ |
Pr1 Gage ‘Cambridge Gage’ |
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| Ma1 Apple ‘Jester’ |
Ma2 Apple ‘Kiddes Orange Red’ |
Pr2 Damson ‘Shropshire Prune’ |
Pr3 Plum ‘Burbank Tangerine’ |
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| Ma3 Apple ‘Wareham’s Russet’ |
Ma4 Apple Saturn |
Ma5 Apple Reinette du Canada |
Ma6 Apple ‘Beauty of Bath’ |
Ma7 Apple ‘Worcester Pearmain’ |
| Ma8 Apple ‘Grandpa Buxton’ |
Ma9 Apple ‘Lord Clyde’ |
Ma10 Apple ‘ |
Ma11 Apple ‘Monty’s Surprise’ |
Me1 Medlar ‘Nottingham’ |
The original Py1 tree, a Pear ‘Beurré Sterckmans’ was removed and replaced by the Cherry ‘Morello’ in 2020, following the death of the rootstock in the previous winter.
The original Ma10 tree, meant to be a ‘Red Miller’s Seedling’, was decidedly un-true to type and, on investigation, turned out to be an out-grown MM106 rootstock tree. The top growth was cut back and an attempt made to top-graft with 4-6 new varieties, to make a ‘family’ or ‘Franken-‘ tree, but sadly the rootstock succumbed to apple canker and the all but one of the grafts failed.