one-day course creating and maintaining orchards

location: nr Thornbury, South Gloucestershire

This one day ‘hands-on’ course will give you confidence and expertise in planting and pruning your own fruit trees. We guide you through choosing varieties and caring for your trees and their surroundings. The practical sessions will be a chance to see ‘best practice’ in planting trees and to try skilled pruning of small and large trees. We have a wide range of fruit trees both large and small for you to practice your skills on, including medlar, pear, apple, plum, greengage, cherry and crab apple. There will be ample opportunity to answer ‘fruity’ questions.

The tutor will guide you through some theory of fruit tree care and will demonstrate planting techniques & supervise you as you prune for yourself. Our aim is to get you started, or maybe back on course, with the basics of winter pruning, and more in tune with what your tree would like from life in your garden. We will give some handy tips on tools and some sensible safety guidance.

Part 1: “Choices, choices!” Why do I want a fruit tree? Where can I put it? What shall I choose? Hopefully this introduction will get you asking more questions,which we will answer.

Part 2: “Good Planting Pays Dividends” The basics of planting a tree and protecting it from damage. You will be provided with a tree and equipment to plant out and then we will review our handiwork.

Part 3: “Pruning- Less-is-Best” The tutor will give you some straightforward guidance into good pruning practice and some consideration of special techniques, eg. Trained fruit. There will follow a substantial session of pruning of trees on the farm.

dates: see 'book online' below

more on orchards

the venue is a 12-acre smallholding in the Vale of Berkeley, just north of Bristol