July 15th – St Swithins Day
The emblems of St. Swithin refer to the legend of the forty days’ rain and the apples from the trees he planted. There is an old saying when it rains on St. Swithin’s Day that the Saint is Christening the apples. Folklore has it that apple growers ask St. Swithin for his blessing each year, no apple should picked or eaten before July 15th and apples still growing at St Swithin’s day will ripen fully.
Local Activity
We are working with local allotment group LADAS to renovate an old orchard locally, including apple, pear and plum trees – see our Flickr website for some nice photos.
Beecraigs planted around 200 fruit trees about 13 years ago – these are now very overgrown and in need of pruning – if you’re walking up from Preston Road try and spot them before you cross the road to the Restaurant. Beecraigs are interested in planting more fruit trees in the patch of land next door to the orchard.
Sun Microsystems have recently planted 18 fruit trees as a community orchard – you can spot them towards the main road.
If you would like to nominate anywhere in Linlithgow as a good place for a community orchard, please get in touch via our Contact page.
Buying fruit trees:
We ordered bare root fruit trees from Tweedies in Dumfries last year, but you can’t order online (they’ll post out a price list)
See Appletreeman Andrew Lear’s website for other nurseries
New Hopetoun Gardens sell pot grown apple trees
Links:
The Children’s Orchard in Glasgow originated at one site, aiming to get children growing and eating fruit, and now helps other local orchards get off the ground. The Commonwealth Orchard is a related project, with the target of planting fruit trees and bushes to harvest in 2014 when the Commonwealth Games come to Glasgow.
Appletreeman Andrew Lear is based in Bridge of Allan and provides practical training and talks on fruit tree pruning and general care (he’s directing our orchard pruning).
Scottish Orchards is a new Scotland-wide body aiming to map, network and promote orchards in all their forms.
Newburgh Orchard Group work with local orchard owners in Fife to sell their harvest, promote new community orchards and generally celebrate local fruit production.
The Orchard Development Group is a not not-for-profit association working to encourage local communities, landowners and other organisations throughout the Scottish Borders to restore, promote and celebrate local orchards, ecologies and culture. The Crailing Community Orchard is the group’s model orchard at Jedburgh, with a 25 year lease and monthly action days.
Transition group Pedal Porty have established a new community orchard at the Donkey Field in Portobello, Edinburgh.
This Common Ground website lists some interesting looking books on orchards, fruit and other related topics
If you are lucky enough to end up with an apple mountain, the Apple Master could save you time – and make chutney a bit less daunting
At Broadlands Community Orchard in Bath, 25 volunteers are restoring a mature 11 acre orchard of 1,100 trees, with local residents able to sponsor trees at £10 a year
The Agroforestry Research Trust in Devon carry out research into temperate agroforestry (think of it as an under-planted orchard!) and also run courses on forest gardening
In Nelson, New Zealand, the Open Orchard project aims to work with the local Council to identify public spaces where fruit trees can be planted, map existing fruit trees and teach people how to preserve fruit