At 8.30 pm all around the world on the 25th March, people switched off their lights for an hour to highlight the issues of climate change. Despite the very wet day, the rain stopped just in time for us to celebrate Earth Hour in the orchard. Well done to everyone who braved the weather to attend and to all our members who celebrated Earth Hour at home. Same time next year!
If you’re going for a walk around the orchard in the next few weeks watch out for the snowdrops and other early Spring flowers.
Our annual display of colourful catkins can be seen in our nut grove. It’s a joy to see the orchard waking up after the long winter and well worth a wander around the orchard to see them!
We have to prune our apple trees twice a year to maintain the health of the trees and encourage crops and growth. This time we were under the expert eye of one of our members, who lead a masterclass in pruning techniques for our other members. Despite the hard efforts there is still plenty of pruning left to do if you want to help at our next work session.
Everyone wrapped up warm and arrived with chairs, blankets and warm drinks to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Windbreaks, a fire pit and some mulled cider helped ward off the chilly night!
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A five star bug hotel is now open for use by all our creepy crawly inhabitants in the orchard. The Junior Wildlife Group spent the day creating an amazing bug hotel. A big thank you to everyone who took part.
Our community orchard is part of a growing movement across the country. You can find out more in this article from the BBC website.
If you would like to become a member of the Lanchester Community Orchard, please get in touch via our ‘contact’ page. New members are always warmly welcomed!
This year we have had a bumper apple crop. With so many apples to pick from our productive trees we needed lots of members to help! We spent a busy day harvesting the apples. Some were packed for members to collect to eat and some were turned into delicious apple juice. We now have a new apple press which came in very handy.
Once again we have been celebrating Mid Summer in the Orchard with our members, families and friends. We all had a lovely evening and shared some amazing food and drinks. The children enjoyed roasting marshmallows on the fire!
To increase the diversity of wildlife in our forest garden area we have created a pond. With the creative use of an old wheelbarrow, we hope to encourage lots of aquatic visitors to our orchard!
Lanchester Community Orchard 