Celebrating local orchards

 With thanks to Lewisham Gardens for posting this on Facebook.

Join the free guided walk between three community orchards. It starts at Albion Millennium Green, a relatively new orchard space, then heads to Mayow Park where the orchard of 11 trees was planted in January 2012.  The walk finishes at the De Frene plot which belongs to the fantastic Sydenham Garden.  Refreshments with a seasonal flavour will be on sale at De Frene and a rare opportunity to see this site.

Its taken a lot of volunteer time from the three local groups to plan this- so do go along; take your children, pet dogs and walking shoes! There will be some tree planting too.

The Orchards:
Albion Millennium Green- http://www.amgfriends.org.uk/
Friends of Mayow Park- http://friendsofmayowpark.blogspot.co.uk/
Sydenham Garden- http://www.sydenhamgarden.org.uk/

Orchard fruits August-September 2013

Victoria Plum

Crawley Beauty

Early Windsor

Our fruit trees are very young and we did not expect much of a harvest. The Czar plum was laden with fruit one day towards the end of August and the next day the flimsy branches which had fruit had been torn and broken from the tree. A few tell-tale plums on the ground were all that remained. The Victoria plums were carefully picked by a group of volunteers while still yellow, to ripen indoors, to avoid the same fate though some branches had already been torn off. Apples had been pulled from trees before they were ripe and, because they were not yet edible, were thrown on the ground with human teeth marks visible!
One Crawley Beauty remained out of eight fruits and two Early Windsor out of six. The Jupiter apple tree had three apples - all removed. In a few years time, when the trees are set free from their protective fencing, people will be able to pick a fruit to eat as they walk past and hopefully not take everything.
Our next task is to prepare the trees for winter. Some will need a prune. Weeds on the the ground underneath will be removed and a deep layer of mulch will be put down on the ground.