News

Fame at last! I’ve graced the pages of The English Garden Magazine, with a feature in which my commitment to agroecological practices and the stewarding of heritage varieties took centre...

After a Spring that proved challenging for many growers, unpredictable rain, winds and temperatures continued into Summer and Autumn. At the nursery, this resulted in a slow start to the...

Tree Council Volunteers attend a planting day to create a coppice of 500 sweet chestnut and cherry trees It’s been a seriously busy season packing and sending out orders of...

With chilly nights hungrily encroaching on meagre daylight hours, and the striking colours of Autumn fading with Winter’s frosty grasp, Nature is preparing for a period of rest and hibernation....

Last month we welcomed a barnful of local stallholders and visitors to the nursery for our Summer Pop-Up. The atmosphere was buzzing and it was fantastic to be able to...

This weekend, I made a visit to the Swansea Orchard Project to tutor in summer grafting and pruning as part of an accredited Certificate in Community Orcharding at a beautiful...

Leading a guided tour of the site at our Maker’s Market last month With the Summer Solstice already behind us, and lots of growth at the nursery, it seems like...

The trees are bulging with fruit. We're enjoying Discovery apples and Beth pears at the moment...

tinified (6) We’ve started lifting trees now they are dormant. Once they are dug out of the ground they are ‘heeld in’ to a bed with very light soil where...

This photo shows young growth on apple trees budded in August 2012.

These Doyenne du commice pears are growing on a 20 year old hawthorn. The scions were cleft grafted in April 2010. So far so good! This Medlar ‘Nottingham’ was budded...

A lot has happened at the nursery since I last updated this blog. Here are some photos of a shed I built using Douglas Fir and European Larch. I take...

These pictures show different techniques for ‘top working’ an existing apple tree. On the left shows a successful rind graft of Lord Lambourne. The right hand picture shows one failed...

These photos were taken on the 23rd July. Left shows a Pitmaston Duchess pear cleft grafted onto a hawthorn. The graft has taken well but hasn’t put on much extension...

The new nursery site was topped last week. I decided to top it rather than take hay off it in order to keep the fertility on site. Today I ran...

This is a Transparent Gage I budded onto a hedgerow damson in August 2009. Despite some rabbit damage it is growing away nicely. Below left shows the Pear, ‘Pitmaston Duchess’...

Having recently found out that Pears, Quince and Medlar can be grafted onto Hawthorn I’ve been experimenting with cleft grafting these onto existing hawthorn trees. This is Doyenne du Comice...

This picture shows where I left non degradable grafting tape on the Adam’s Pearmain tree for the whole of the last growing season. The tape has restricted the growth of...

This is the tree before pruning…….. ……and this is the tree after It’s very harsh but in this particular case was necessary. I wouldn’t normally advocate pruning a tree like...

This image shows an apple tree deep in snow. The snow is so deep that the rabbits can now gain access to the bark above the spiral guard and as...

The pruning season is now with us once again! I began a renovation programme at this orchard in North Wales last year and returned recently to begin the second year’s...

I am running two fruit tree grafting courses in March 2010, just north of Oswestry, Shropshire. They will both be on the weekend of the 6th and 7th and will...

I was recently called to a farm in Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, to renovate a very neglected Plum and Damson orchard. The site looked much more like a woodland than an orchard,...

I have spent the last two days working at Frank Matthews nursery in Tenbury Wells. I went with the intention of learning how to propagate trees by budding. I very...