Tree Planting

We work with schools and community groups to establish flourishing orchards that benefit people and wildlife.

We offer a bespoke orchard design and planting service to help you at every stage of establishing your orchard. Our expert team will advise you on what to plant and where and offer additional support where needed, including sourcing funding, public consultation, communications, volunteer recruitment and coordination. We take care of supplying the fruit trees and bushes for your project and providing the equipment, materials and people power to plant them.

Planting trees is the easy bit.

We focus on establishing orchards rather than simply planting them. Once the trees have been planted, you can expect us to check in with you to know how the trees are doing, and offer training to give you the skills to keep them healthy and thriving. We also recommend hosting regular maintenance days and activities at your new orchard to help embed it as a key part of your school or community.

Got an idea for a new orchard? Get in touch with us to discuss how we can be involved in your project.

Contact us

FAQs

Every year, grants are made available by various funding providers to support community tree planting, food growing and health and well-being initiatives. We have ample experience of writing successful funding bids and are happy to help you submit your own funding application. We can also help to identify suitable sources of funding for your project if you don’t know where to start.
Applying for funding can be a lengthy process, and we need at least several weeks to plan ahead and allocate resources for every tree planting project. Tree planting should happen in the winter months (December-March), so make sure you contact us a few months before the planting season, ideally in the spring or summer. This will give us a greater chance of securing funding and ensure we can supply the trees, materials and labour for your project. If your project requires a public consultation, we will aim to carry this out during the autumn, before the start of the planting season.
A typical community orchard planting project can look like this:
June: Initial contact made, site visit carried out, funding application submitted.
July: Funding confirmed, draft planting plan created.
September-November: Public consultation carried out, planting plan finalised.
December: Trees and bushes selected from nursery, materials gathered, comms sent out to recruit volunteers.
January: Planting carried out over one or more days, depending on the number of trees and volunteers.
Once the trees have been planted, it is up to you, your community group or your school to maintain them. Fruit trees are generally quite low-maintenance, but require a little more attention in their first few years. Newly planted fruit trees require frequent watering during spring and summer and a regular top-up of mulch to suppress weeds and retain moisture in the soil. Fruit trees should also be pruned annually to promote healthy growth and fruit production.