The secrets of Somerset’s Orchards

Traditional orchards hold enormous value for people in the food they produce and the heritage fruit varieties they contain. They also help form a mosaic farming environment that supports an extraordinary range of wildlife. Scattered across the Somerset countryside they provide an important role in nature recovery networks.

Somerset is one of many counties, historically known for its orchards. Despite a loss of 50% during the past 50 years, there are still orchards across the county producing a variety of fruit for cider and eating, both commercially and for the community. Orchards were once an essential part of a farm or home, supplying local fruit to local communities. Their presence across the Somerset countryside replicated and complimented the ancient wood pasture of many rural areas. Lots of wildlife has come to rely on orchards and while traditional orchards are renowned for their varieties of apples, pears and plums for eating and making cider, orchards are special both for their rare old trees and the important ecosystems they support. Orchards support thousands of species. If left unsprayed, natural processes allow an orchard to take of themselves, a fine balance between predators (such as wasps, spiders, earwigs and ladybirds) and prey (caterpillars and grubs of various insects). Fallen fruit provides food for a variety of creatures such as birds, small mammals, and insects. Trees provide shelter, nesting, roosting, and hiding places. As they grow and age, they offer a home to a whole community of animals and fungi that feed exclusively on dead or decaying wood.

Reviving relic orchards and planting new ones plays an important role in reconnecting woodlands, hedgerows, gardens and other orchards and helping nature to recover from loss of habitats and food. They have a role as stepping stones for wildlife moving through our countryside and suburbs, providing connectivity between well-established traditional orchards, already brilliant for wildlife.

As we put greater value on reversing our wildlife declines and creating more space for nature, orchards provide a source of locally produced food, short-supply chains, and varieties that can withstand extreme weather conditions and pests. Traditional orchards offer the right habitats and production levels, especially across a landscape like the Somerset Levels, to help meet some of these new opportunities and challenges.

Traditional orchards, although essentially a crop, can provide remarkable havens for wildlife. While modern orchards are planted with rows of low growing, closely planted trees and short grassland, trees in traditional orchards were planted at low densities, were grazed with livestock and cut for hay under the wide canopy. Individual trees are long-lived and managed, and the ground layer is lightly used and free of chemicals.

WHEN DID ORCHARDS ARRIVE?

Orchards were planted with domestic apple trees and other fruit and nut trees from Roman times onwards. They became a well-established feature of most farms in apple-growing country. The apples and the cider produced formed part of farm-worked wages. The rise of cheap supermarket imports and a drive toward intensification saw the demise of many orchards from the 1950s onwards, but more recently this trend is reversing, with rising appreciation for local apple varieties, and for the social role of orchards as community projects.

Growing fruit and leaving space for wildlife on Wedmore

Scattered around the Isle of Wedmore on the Somerset Levels, David Banwell cares for and manages five traditionally grown orchards across 26 acres (10 hectares). Some range from 100 years old to just two or three years old. They are never sprayed with pesticides or fertilisers. Instead, David manages his orchards both for growing fruit and for the benefit of wildlife. “Fallen trees are left where they fall and new ones planted”, explains David. “I avoid pruning too hard – just enough to get the right shape before leaving well alone. Between the trees the grassland is grazed by young calves, six to 12 months old until the 9th August when we traditionally move them to other pastures. This ensures their dung has gone by the time the apples fall and they don’t eat the ripening fruits.”

To avoid outbreaks of diseases spreading - such as honey fungus and the lethal fire blight – the five orchards are spread apart from each other around the Isle of Wedmore and contain 20 – 30 varieties between them. These include varieties that flower at different times to ensure not all trees suffer from late frosts and allow for harvest to be spread across autumn. “Each year we pick on average 150 tonnes of apples while three to four tonnes are left, including those rotten, for birds such as blackbirds, redwings and fieldfares”, says David.

“An orchard is a lifetime’s work. We let nature do its thing, seeing what comes and we take what is there.”

Traditional Somerset fruit trees

Looking at older maps (through the Southwest Heritage Trust), for example, from the 1880s to 1910s can show where orchards used to be, often shown as small tree icons, often in fields close to farm buildings and houses. Many gardens, large and small, may still have old fruits trees growing from earlier last century.

From public footpaths and roads, relic orchards can often be spotted. Single or several old fruit trees may stand alone in a small field, all that remains of a once thriving orchard. Others may have been saved, with new, young fruit trees planted amongst the few older, veteran trees

Orchards have gradually disappeared for a variety of reasons. One momentous

There are 156 of varieties of apple associated with Somerset and often specific to a farm or village. Many local varieties of fruit trees are rare due to the disappearance of orchards. There is renewed interest in these varieties – often know as heritage trees – as they are often better suited to the local geography and environment of the county in which they were developed.

These are some still known today:

 Beauty of Bath

 Yarlington Mill

 Taunton Cross

 Stoke Red from Rodney Stoke, 1920s

 Hoary morning from the 1800s

 Frederick