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Following her popular book on snowdrops,
Newbury-based journalist and author
Naomi
Slade
decided to turn her attention to something
new when fallen apples gave her the idea for
her latest book,
An Orchard Odyssey
I
t can take something very simple to bring an
idea together and, for me, it was the sight of
the ground strewn with yellow apples next to
the Kennet and Avon Canal in central Newbury
that led to my new book.
The truth is that I love orchards and I always
have done. I remember, as a small child, coming
face to face with a huge apple at the end of my
grandmother’s garden, it was huge – as big as
my head, I remember – and I visited it every day
watching it further swell and ripen.
But as I grew, it seemed that there was a
disconnect between people and fruit that I could
not quite understand.
Apples came from France and South Africa, not
Kent or Herefordshire. People didn’t seem really
to know what to do with the tree in their garden,
or even to have the confidence to reliably identify
and scrump an apple or
a cherry or a plum in
passing. The legacy of gardening grandparents
dwindled and knowledge was eroded.
I find that people often view orchards with
nostalgia, as something that was lovely, but is
gone. Lost. Grubbed up irrevocably. The gnarled
trees never to be lounged under again, a whole
culture rendered a pretty, romantic story of
times past.
Yet, as a journalist specialising in gardening and
lifestyle, the life I live and the landscape I see
contradicts this. There are fruit trees everywhere.
My house, built in the 1870s, is on a road
that 150 years ago punched straight through
orchards that grew on the edge of town. And this
is a pattern that is repeated elsewhere; around
smaller market towns, trees old and new grow in
back gardens and orchard remnants live on.
And it is not just about gardens. Drive up the A4
towards Reading or head out on the back roads
towards the M4 and the hedgerows are bursting
with self-set apples. There is a walnut tree in
the car park of Newbury Baptist church and
cherry plums spill out by the tow path.
I have seen the ground carpeted with
fruit on Newbury allotment – fruit
crushed underneath the car wheels
of allotmenteers heading for their
primped and productive plots,
seemingly unaware of the
irony.
And as I walked around town, taking photographs
and thinking about fruit trees, the idea developed
and grew. The world didn’t need another
gardening book, what it needed was a game-
changing sort of book, offering a whole new
perspective on orchard gardening.
A new perspective that would bring it closer to
the ordinary person, make it more relevant, more
achievable. Something that considers the realities
of busy lives and small gardens yet permits a
sense of ownership of the trees and a greater
connection to fruit, landscape, heritage – the
things that matter most to the reader.
The way forward was clear. For conservation
purposes the definition of an orchard is ‘A
minimum of five trees with crown edges not more
than 20 metres apart’.
And if one takes this definition and applies it to
most people’s lives, this is a huge area and not
many trees. Therefore, if you have five houses in
a row and a fruit tree in each garden, this is an
orchard.
I looked out of my window. There are 18 fruit
trees in the adjacent five gardens, including mine.
In Oxford, there is a crowd-sourced foraging
map run by Oxford Wild Food, which declared
on twitter that “Oxford is not a city with added
fruit trees, it is an orchard with added houses.” A
truer word was never spoken – and to my mind,
Newbury is no different.
Thus, the book was born,
An Orchard Odyssey
,
which aims to re-engage people with both their
orchard heritage and inspire them to notice and
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five trees is an orchard
Fruit for thought
Victorian variety
Reverend WWilkes